What does someone on your street think about something?

Online I've long known that it's possible to use a wildcard search on Tweetdeck to fill a column with a stream of everything on Twitter at a given moment or at least as much as the API can handle to update with. But only today did I notice that you can combine this with a location search to essentially see what people are tweeting in your local area, as close as a 100m.

Within the "location" box you can search for your own city or locale.  When the map shifts close, change the radio to 100m and then shift the map to where you live and click.  The circle shifts to exactly where you live.  Change the radius to 1km and you have a stream of tweets from people who have their location turned on.

For my part that just means people visiting Sefton Park which could be exciting on an event day.  But I've increased the radius to 10km and turned on "verified users only" to limit things a bit which means I have a constantly updating news wire about Liverpool and a few of the surrounding areas.  Which isn't to say that opening it up to anyone isn't an entertaining free for all.

There are probably journalistically useful ways of utilising this.  If there's a major event happening you could choose the locale then narrow the radius until you're very close, so long as you have a rough idea of the area and patience with the map as it floats around in the tiny window.  Eurovision night should be a hoot ...