In a move that places Twitter in direct competition with other location based services including Foursquare and Gowalla, the social networking company has announced the option for businesses to claim their locations.

The new feature, which shows up in the users venue feed can be seen in the screen capture on this page (located above). The image shows that a recent Tweet by a Twitter employee checked them in at Twitter Headquarters.

Twitter, a micro-blogging service, is perfect for the feature since many users already check-in using other services such as Foursquare and then update their location based information through the Twitter interface.

As Duncan Riley at Inquisitr.com points out:

The image first appeared on Hackernews (via Dave Winer) and cant be confirmed as legitimate at this stage, however there was a link (now not working) on the Twitter.com domain where this was allegedly visible for a period of time.

There’s still no word from Twitter on how the new feature will be used. Will it be a simple geo-location tag or will they incorporate badges, games and other options such as discount codes for checking in at certain locations.

What do you think about this new Twitter option? I’ll be checking in from my couch a whole bunch, I assume since I own an LLC I can claim my business address as my home location, but I’ll have to wait and see how much leeway Twitter gives me.

[image courtesy: Mike Stenger]