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I have a soft spot for simple twitter app. Since I started dedicating this blog to twitter eco-system, localtweeps.com has been on my upcoming top twitter apps’ list. It’s simple: to seed the future growth of this humble app, they ask people to tweet about one thing that everyone has: zip code. It turned out people love it! Fascinated by the explosive growth it has experienced, I reached out to the folks behind localtweeps.com for an interview. Here we are, Zack Steven, co-founder and CEO of localtweeps.com.

1. where did you get the idea of starting localtweeps.com (love to
hear how your background, partnership served up to the initial success
of the project)

Zack: I started using Twitter more actively a few months ago and found it
surprisingly difficult to find relevant users to follow, especially locally.
All of the search tools seemed to be based on follower count, which I don’t
think is the best measure of authenticity. Even a search by location
returned uneven results because the location field in Twitter doesn’t have
standard formatting.

The team that developed localtweeps has been leveraging technology to
strengthen local communities for a while. Our first offering
www.buythechange.com is a neighborhood based local commerce site in the Twin
Cities that makes it easy for people to buy and sell goods and services with
their friends and neighbors. Twitter is a powerful tool for communication,
and we thought that mapping profiles and content to geography would be
useful in connecting real world communities.

2. how long did it take to bring this from idea to app.

Zack: We released the very first functionality within a week of the idea, but
didn’t go public with it until about 2 weeks later. We’ve been working to
aggressively roll out enhancements based on our own vision and feedback from
users. We’ve got some exciting things in the works.

3. did you expect the explosive growth of localtweeps? what is the
current status of the project (traffic, main usage etc.).

Zack: We didn’t know what to expect, but we’ve been thrilled with the response.
It’s obvious that local matters to a lot of people. It’s a completely
user-created site that has exploded based on people seeing value and telling
their tweeps about it. Our traffic from both new and returning visitors is
strong and people are responding favorably to the updates we’ve released.

4. Who do you consider as main competitors, What is next for
localtweeps.com?

Zack: We’re a simple hyperlocal user-created Twitter directory, which sets us
apart from the competitors who auto-populate content, rank results based on
follower count or rely on the Twitter location field to place users in a
general area. No other service allows people to connect at the ZIP code
level or customize their profile with a hashtag. Any user who lists
themselves at localtweeps can customize their localtweeps listing anytime by
including #LT in any tweet. It’s a great way to share locally relevant
content in your city and ZIP.

We’re focused on providing tools that make local connections and information
sharing easier and expanding our list of international directories. We’ll
keep things simple but we’ve got some cool features in the works – follow
@localtweeps to be the first to hear!

There are four local twitter websites that I remember (without searching hard);

- Localtweeps
- Bostontweets
- Geofollow
- Chirpcity

My top choice: Localtweeps
What l like about locatweeps so much is how simple/intuitive it is when I land on their website. All I have to do is to enter my zip code (everyone has and remembers his/her zip code), Localtweeps will then take you to twitter with a tweet (just like “twitter this” plug in). Then all your followers will see and spread the news. Localtweeps launched early April, 09 and It may very well earned more than 10k+ clicks on April 6th, alone. Text style UI works to its favor.

ChirpCity:
Chirpcity is a bit old school, the home page is directory style, I must click into a city to see who is there. It aggregated a lot more info about tweeples than Localtweeps, but too much information. Not a fan.

Bostontweet:
Sometime less is more. Bostontweet try to be THE tweet center for Boston. The concept is great. But the work flow/feature needs major overhaul. Too many words/stuff trying to do a very simple thing.

GeoFollow:
It’s like localtweeps back in 1996. The home page is full of people images in heavy colors, tag clouds, search box does not really work. Are they for real.

Localizing twitter is in its early stage, much can be done but it’s important to start with being simple.

I think Localtweeps will emerge as a winner, for now.