Tell HN: Go to Google Maps. Type Your Twitter Handle (with @)

Doesn't seem to work for me, anything special you have to do? Maybe the feature is locale dependent. Could you post a link if it's serialized in the url?

I've got "Columbus Ohio" listed right in my twitter bio (as a location rather than just included as text) and GMaps went directly to some swimming related retail business in Valencia, CA, weird.

With my handle (@go), I get a store in Poland.

Mine and the few friends I tried are nowhere close.

I got the whitehouse and I am not sure why.

Pretty terrible result frankly. I geocode a number of tweets, but it shows my "location" as that of the office for a company I've conversed with here in Thailand.

It gave a city outside my hometown. I've definitely never used twitter there, so I'm puzzled as to why.

I got Avebury's Stone Circle... wtf

Mine goes to University of Michigan...which is a different country altogether.

Just tried @Obama, Guantanamo Bay Detention camp.

The result it gave me is in a country I've never set foot in.

perfect. plus random sampling of my follower/ees was dead on to their business location.

Mine returned the last account I tweeted at, Puma's HQ...

Mine is somewhat accurate, I was here a month ago. http://imgur.com/8m8tbr2

Just did a small test: It gave the approximate location of my office (luckily off a few streets, so my privacy is not too badly damaged).

Coincidentally, my office is the only spot where I am logged in to Twitter using Google Chrome. Using Firefox at home.

UPDATE: If your Twitter handle gives a false result at first, try prefixing it with the term: twitter

E.g. 'twitter @whateveryourhandleis'

I was put into the Yankee Stadium (@bopfger). It must be able to read my mind as I would love to be there. Not sure, how Google would put me there, though as I have never been there and never tweeted from New York either.

This is pretty scary actually, it managed to pinpoint me to locations that I hadn't mentioned on Twitter at all, incluing where I work.

Interesting.

I'm licensed through a company called Shirlaws Group - Australian HQ is where I work in Brisbane; global HQ is London. Google Maps pins 'me' at Shirlaws motorcycles in Aberdeen, Scotland.

So it's smart enough to make some connection "Jacob Aldridge = Shirlaws" but must be missing some wider data or geo information.

So after giving it some thought and doing some additional research it looks like they are building a superdetailed graph based on your relations, textual content etc. etc., try and determine and geocode locations based on the analyzed data and then plot those locations through Google Maps. It looks like it is even smart enough to go through your followers, determine the kind of relationship you have with that particular person, and if you and the other person are closely related enough pick certain locations up from their timeline and share those locations between your profile and that of the other person (something which supposedly has happened to a friend of mine given the returned data.)

Anyway, not scary at all, nope. </sarcasm>

Hahahahahahah I got CERN labs in Switzerland. I'm pretty excited about that actually.

@bartozone