"Twitter’s Geoclocation API certainly has its benefits; put aside the lust for all this information though and we’re left with quite a few things that could go very wrong with all this data. Here are five reasons Twitter Geolocation is a really, really bad idea." - Martin Bryant from Bookmarklet

no doubt really good points and should definitely be taken into consideration. Like Twitter said though, i expect they won't be disclosing pinpoint locations and they wont allow for storing of these locations - so *if* it works out right - we shouldn't be able to tell where someone is exactly at any given time. You're right in regard to knowing they're not at home, but that doesn't necessarily mean there isn't anyone else there...I think there will be hurdles and issues at first, but the benefits of this in the longer term completely outweigh any concerns i feel - Zee.

Did you come up with an extra reason during the writing of the article (see url of the post)? - Mathieu Ayel

D'oh! Meant to change that! Yep - busted! :) - Martin Bryant

Which one was it? Btw I agree with Zee, I think the issues you listed will be there at first but it's mostly down to twitter users to understand the benefits and pitfalls of geolocation. Latitude may do a better job at protecting its users but maybe twitter apps will be build/adapted to provision similar level of services. - Mathieu Ayel

Mathieu - Number 6 came to me as I wrote it. I changed the title but forgot the URL. Yes, I think societal change will overcome a lot of these problems eventually but they may cause problems for takeup of the feature over the next year or two. - Martin Bryant