Over the past few months we’ve seen Google push location reviews pretty hard. Its Hotpot feature has been developing quickly and today the company has added something pretty significant – Twitter integration for place reviews in the Android Maps app.
With today’s update, when you leave a review for a location you’ll have the option to tweet out a link to it right from the app.
While that might seem like not that much of an exciting feature, Google is clearly putting a lot of effort into making Hotpot a success. Location reviews have already crept into the browser-based version of Google Maps, as well as Android and iOS apps. Promoting the feature with Twitter integration encourages users to spread the word, helping the company establish the service as a viable competitor to better-known rivals like Yelp.
The ‘Post Review to Twitter’ feature is available in an update to Google Maps that launches today. Also included is a new feature for social location sharing service Latitude. Now when you see that a friend is nearby on the map, you can ‘Ping’ them right from inside the app. This will cause a notification to appear on the friend’s Android device, helping you arrange to meet.
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Coupling this with the recent addition of location ‘Check-ins’ to Latitude, it’s clear that Google is working to make the as-yet little used service more user friendly and appealing to everyday users.
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