Not everyone wants to add their current location to a tweet so this feature is off by default and must be activated to use. Check out How To Tweet with Your Location to learn how you can turn it on. People who choose to add this additional layer of context help make Twitter a richer information network for all of us—location data can make tweets more useful.

Let’s say I’m at my office and I hear a loud boom. It sounded serious, so I search Twitter for “boom.” Among the first results could be someone who tweeted “Boom go the fireworks!” This could be anywhere in the world. However, if that person had activated the new tweet location feature then the neighborhood data under the tweet would read, “SoMa.”

Now I know it’s just fireworks going off in my neighborhood. Boom! Plus, the word “SoMa” is linked to a Google map so I can explore a bit more. There are many ways location data can be useful when paired with tweets. For more information on how this feature works, be sure to check out our help article, About the Tweet With Your Location Feature.

Update: Forgot to share that this feature is initially available only to US users with more countries on the way and wanted to mention the fine folks at Maponics, our partner in providing neighborhood information.

Through this arrangement, people will be able to find relevant tweets in Yahoo! Search as well as other popular products and properties, including the Yahoo! Homepage, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Sports, and more. Yahoo! will also be able to build unique Twitter clients into their properties making it easier for folks to tweet wherever they feel comfortable within the Yahoo! network.

From our perspective, this partnership represents a big opportunity. Tweets may be short, but they have proven over and over again to contain valuable information. As the Twitter information network grows and expands, it becomes more valuable for everyone who participates. Our open approach helps us get closer to providing universal connectivity to a global network of immediate information.

First, we’ve created an open source directory for the entire company. This lists all the public software that the engineering teams have created or contributed to. Much of Twitter’s success has been enabled by open-source software, and we want to give back. Everyone is welcome to use this software for their own projects, and if the project is Twitter-related, so much the better.

We’ve also begun posting to our new engineering blog, which focuses on day-to-day engineering challenges. Subscribe to it if you’re interested in the development of Twitter internals. We’ll try to sample the full range of software development issues we face at a fast-moving company like Twitter. We already have posts about how local trends are organized, how we attack capacity problems, and how you can use our translation libraries.

Finally, we’ve updated our job descriptions to better reflect our company culture and the skills we’re looking for. My team is looking for performance, systems, and Ruby engineers, but the company is hiring across all groups, so check out our full listings.

To keep up with all these developments in one convenient place, just follow @twittereng on Twitter itself.

Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second. (Yes, we have TPS reports.)

Tweet deliveries are a much higher number because once created, tweets must be delivered to multiple followers. Then there’s search and so many other ways to measure and understand growth across this information network. Tweets per day is just one number to think about. We’ll make time to share more information so please stay tuned.

Post-disaster needs assessment is underway and there will be an international donor conference late next month in New York City. In the meantime, there are ways to stay involved in sustained efforts such as the WFP’s monthly donation program.

Kevin Thau and our mobile team have recently arranged free SMS tweets for Digicel Haiti customers. To activate the service, mobile phone users in Haiti can text follow @oxfam to 40404. Accounts are created on the fly and any account can be followed this way.

Since President René Préval and others issued appeals for humanitarian aid, there has been a massively coordinated global response to begin rebuilding Haiti. In addition to governments and organizations doing their part, technology has played a meaningful role. Donations accepted via SMS, Facebook attracting and educating thousands of concerned individuals, Google providing satellite imagery tools to relief workers, iTunes and Download to Donate converting everyday purchases into emergency funding—software augments humanity in a meaningful way and the arts unite us.

We’re thrilled to have been invited to join a stunning assemblage of industries and individuals who are combining forces to raise proceeds for Haiti and make certain that the life cycle of this particular humanitarian mission extends long after the initial burst of compassion. Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief will be the most widely distributed telethon in history both internationally and across all media platforms. This broadcast marks the first US based telethon to air in China as well. On the evening of Friday, January 22, 2010 global citizens will come together in support of those in need.

The lineup for this program includes more than one hundred of the biggest names in film, television, and music. Proceeds from the telethon will go to The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, United Nations World Food Programme, Oxfam America, Partners in Health, the Red Cross, UNICEF, and Yele Haiti Foundation. This effort can be a testament to the positive global impact we’re capable of achieving when we focus on a common goal. Tune in however you like and contribute if you can. We’ve curated additional resources and suggestions at Hope140.org.

Easy Ways To Help
Many of us are wondering how we can contribute to the healing process. A few simple but effective ways to help have emerged.

• The American Red Cross allows anyone in the US to text HAITI to 90999 as an easy way to donate $10 to the recovery effort. The money is billed to your mobile phone account.
• Musician Wyclef Jean’s Haiti-focused organization, Yele is also accepting text-message donations. To donate $5, text Yele to 501501 or visit the foundation’s web site.
• Oxfam International has also set up an earthquake response fund. You can visit their web site to make a donation to this fund.

To follow each of these recovery efforts as they progress, we can follow @redcross, @wyclef, and @oxfam. The Huffington Post, CNN, and The New York Times have spent time curating special lists to track events related to Haiti.