Twitter 360 IPhone App Review: Useful or Too Big Brother?

Augmented reality is here and it's not going away! Twitter 360 is an iPhone app that uses "geotagging" - a new Twitter augmented reality feature that allows your friends to see the location from which your last "tweet" was published. With this app, you can see how far your friends are from you, based on their latest Twitter update. But is this just one more step towards "Big Brother" implanting a computer chip in your body, tracking everything you do? Well, no, Twitter 360 doesn't go quite that far. Here's a closer look at the Twitter 360 iPhone 3GS app.

How does the Twitter 360 app work?
The Twitter 360 app uses the iPhone compass and GPS features to pinpoint your location. When you launch the app, the GPS feature determines your location (Don't worry -- you have the option of turning this feature off, becoming invisible to your friends).

Twitter 360 is integrated within Google Maps, allowing you to pinpoint exactly where your friends are, based on their latest "tweet."

The "Latest Tweets" mode allows you to see the location of your Twitter pals' latest tweets.

The "Locate My Friends" mode shows you the location of your friends. There's also an option to place your Twitter pals into your favorites and see only those friends you've designated into that group.

It also has a feature to limit the location range of tweets. If you have a lot of Twitter "followees", it's an excellent way to weed out people living 5,000 miles away from you and only see updates in your city or neighborhood.

Price:
The Twitter 360 app is priced at $2.99, but can be found on sale for $0.99 during limited time sales offers. Even at $2.99, it's a cheap price for such a heavy duty app.

Is Twitter 360 useful? Or is this just a novelty app that you won't use in 3 weeks?
In theory, it's an excellent idea--always know where your friends are and what they're doing from the ease of your iPhone. But how helpful is this app?

It depends on how you use it and if your friends are out doing interesting stuff. If your Twitter friends rarely send "tweets", you're not going to get much use out of this. Plus, if you're more of a "home body" and your friends tend to stay home too, it's not very exciting to log in and always see everyone you follow is either at work, school, or home. On the other hand, if you have a busy social life or are planning on meeting up with a group of friends in a city, it's a great way to see where everyone is relative to your location.

Drawbacks: Because it uses the compass/GPS feature, the augmented reality of Twitter 360 app only works on the iPhone 3GS. It does not work on an iPod Touch or older iPhone models released prior to June 2009. Your Twitter friends also need to opt-in to Twitter's geotagging feature in order to see their location. It's also not a full-featured Twitter application, but updates to the Twitter 360 app are expected to be frequent.

Final thoughts:
While this is a nifty little application, the thought of everyone knowing where you are is a bit creepy. It does serve a purpose, but like anything, could be abused. However, augmented reality is slowly creeping into technology and will likely become a giant buzzword in the upcoming decade. The Twitter 360 app is only the beginning.