Like having your own personal map and compass in the Twitterverse, Bird’s-Eye is an iPad app designed to track tweets in a particular geographic location.
After downloading the iPad app in the iTunes store, users are prompted to enter their Twitter credentials and street address into Bird’s-Eye homescreen. The app asks for an an address so it can show tweets within your general area when you’re logged in.
Once you have entered your credentials and street address, the app will display a comprehensive map view of everything happening in that area. Instantly, tweets from your neighborhood pop up from users you may have never even heard of.
Within map view, pins will appear on the map where people are tweeting. Of course, you will only see people who have their location information turned on, but you don’t have to be following a users to see their location-based tweets.
By tapping on the pinned tweet on the map, you can zoom in to get a better idea where exactly the Twitter user is.
If you would prefer to view your tweets in the standard stream, you can switch to the stream view where pins appear on the map but tweets are displayed in a list view to the left of the map. In this mode, users can click to zoom into their tweet on the map.
Although you can’t tweet directly from the app, you can click the blue arrow on a particular user’s tweet. Doing so will open mobile Twitter, and from there, you can check out a user’s profile, respond and follow if you so choose.
You can easily add other areas that interest you beyond your local area. Saved areas will appear to the left of the map in the map view so you can easily switch between locations.
What’s really cool about the map-based Birds-Eye’s iPad application is the ability to see what’s going on in a particular area.
For example, imagine using this tool for the London Olympics. You would be able to see a concentration of tweets originating from that particular area and get an area view of exactly what’s going on.
On the other hand, you could easily track news during a disaster or crisis, since Twitter is becoming a more important tool for these instances.
Users can download a free copy of Bird’s-Eye for iPad running iOS 4.2 or later from the iTunes store.
