In 2008, Nathan Heinrich of Des Moines and business partner Aaron Donsbach of Seattle, Washington, registered Twitter accounts for nearly all U.S. ZIP Codes. At the time, they had recognized a problem with location-based communication and felt that a combination of the Twitter platform and ZIP Codes would provide an answer.
Heinrich and Donsbach have gone through a few different solutions in the past two years, but most recently they launched TwitZip. They’ve also expanded their team, adding Eric Junker of Des Moines and Jerry Segler of Seattle.
In a recent email interview, Nathan and I discussed TwitZip, the goals for the service, what Twitter thinks of it, and the content partners they’ve brought on board.
Silicon Prairie News: What is TwitZip and how did you come up with the idea?
Thanks to our sponsor
Nathan Heinrich: In 2008 my co-founder and I had a phone conversation and realized we were both interested in solving everyday location-based communication problems. He was frustrated there was no easy way for him to connect with parent’s during his daughter’s field trips. I was frustrated that I could not get highlights of high school football games until the late night news even though I knew hundreds of people were in the stands who could tell me the score or provide me a highlight via their mobile device. I didn’t have any way to find out who was at the game so I could “tap them on the shoulder” and ask for a highlight.
As we looked at available platforms to launch a location-based service that connected people through places, we came to realize the two platforms were Facebook and Twitter. We liked the serendipitous, openness and mobility of Twitter so we began to brainstorm ways to do location-based communication on Twitter. We wanted our solution to be available to the masses and that’s when we thought the one location-based piece of data everyone knows is their ZIP Code.
(Photo from twitter.com/nateheinrich)
How does it work and where is it available?
It’s very simple, users just need to follow their ZIP Code on Twitter to get hyperlocal news and daily deals. We’ve partnered with Outside.in for the hyperlocal news and Groupon for the daily deals. They both have been awesome to work with! We are looking to add local government alerts in the near future.
We are also very excited about a feature we just launched that makes every ZIP Code a retweeting community. Users can just @reply their ZIP Code and it will retweet their message. This allows people to openly connect via their ZIP Code!
Why did the team ultimately decide to use the ZIP Codes accounts for TwitZip?
The goal of the project is to help network citizens together to make their ZIP Code a better place. We are doing this because we are passionate about creating solutions that integrate communications with location-based information. We love the fact that “you don’t have to be there to be there”.
What does Twitter think about how you’re using the platform?
Twitter has been totally cool about how we’re using the platform, especially since we’ve made each ZIP Code a retweeting community. We have been transparent with Twitter since the beginning as we realize we registered these ZIP Codes before the Twitter rules against mass account creation were updated in January 2009. At the end of the day, it makes sense to have uniform and open use of ZIP Codes so thousands of ZIP Codes aren’t used in thousands of different ways.
How can our readers help with the project?
Readers can help us by following their ZIP Code, @replying their ZIP Code and providing us feedback for features they would like to see. There are so many options so we are taking our time to figure out the next best features instead of tweeting a bunch of new content.
