Taking the Internet Local

Update:
Twitter now has a way to find other local tweeters with it’s new search feature, so I’ve created a new twitter account to connect with local tweeters, click here to follow Twitter.com/EthanD_Local

*warning major geek talk used in this post, if you don’t understand what the heck I’m talking about don’t worry

Hello my name is Ethan and I am a tech geek…. hi ethan

I spend a lot of time on the internets and have “virtually” met tons of really cool people. I have actually met quite a few of these people in real life. First through Xanga I met some great people then met them for real when I traveled to California. I them met some more folks via twitter down in Washington DC both at the Heritage foundation’s modern media strategies workshop and at CPAC.

But there are a ton of cool people in the world and I can’t “follow” all of them.

So in my ruminations of this subject I have decided that the megatrend is for people worldwide to connect but the counter trend is for the Internet to get very local.

One tool that I’ve begun using to achieve the local nature of the internet is Twitter.com. I discovered @KnownHuman while using the Super tuesday Google Maps/Twitter mashup which would display election related tweets via their location on Google maps.

And when he tweets about local supermarkets I am much more interested than when @scobleizer tweets about a restaurant in Southern California. This local interest makes the internet much more engaging.

So I went on a quest to find all the people in Lancaster, PA on Twitter, I used google to search site:twitter.com location lancaster pa

hat tip to Radical Behavior

And I found several people whom I am now following.

Here is my local list for Tweeter’s in Lancaster, PA If you know of any more please leave a comment

Matthew Harrington
@penti

Lon Farenwald
@lfaren
http://ghostwheel.net/

P. Bradley Robb
@KnownHuman
http://www.bradleyrobb.net/

Ethan Demme (me)
@ethand
http://ethandemme.com

Paul Rothrock
@icelander
http://www.movetoiceland.com/

Josh Babetski
@quixado
http://www.quixoticbravado.com/

@tracibabe

Kristofer Harzinski
@kharzinski
http://www.krisharzinski.org/

Morgan Kochel
@Alkhemist
http://www.ziki.com/en/alkhemist
http://zodpa.blogspot.com/

Admittedly this works well in a small non techie town like Lancaster Pennsylvania but try it out and see who you can find.

Comments?