Twitter buys Mixer Labs to enhance geolocation services

Aiming to enhance its location services, Twitter has acquired Mixer Labs, a San Mateo-based start-up.

Mixer recently launched GeoAPI, a service helping developers build geolocation aware applications.

“As of today, they’re part of Twitter and will be working to combine the contextual relevance of location to tweets,” said Twitter CEO Ev Williams. “We want to know What’s happening?, and more precisely, Where is it happening? As a dramatic example, twittering ‘Earthquake!’ alone is not as informative as ‘Earthquake!’ coupled with your current location.”

The acquisition complements Twitter’s recently-launched geo-tagging API.

“We will be looking at how to integrate the work Mixer Labs has done with the Twitter API in useful ways that give developers behind geo-enabled apps like Birdfeed, Seesmic Web, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twidroid, Twittelator Pro and others powerful new possibilities,” said Williams.

Financial details of the deal weren’t disclosed.