When Google Maps was introduced in 2005, it was a watershed moment in the distributed web. While Microsoft had developed TerraServer (the first free API mapping service) in 1996, there was something about the elegance and power of the AJAX implementation of Google Maps that unleashed the creativity of multitudes of developers to spawn a million mash-ups, and a new era of representing information geographically began.
While mapping and geographic tools have been successfully utilized in many areas such as driving directions and event locations, some of the more interesting applications are in what might be called “location-based social media.” All social networks generally incorporate members’ location as a piece of information, but these sites and services offer very specific geographic functions and often incorporate related technologies such as GPS and mobile.
Frappr, Platial, and Socialight are sites that allow users to collaboratively mark locations on a shared map and post notes or comments about them. The uses are fairly open-ended and range from favorites places around town to fan clubs showing where everyone lives. Socialight also allows users to send a location to a mobile phone, but all that’s send is a link to a web page.
A service more oriented towards mobile is Dodgeball. It allows users to SMS their current location which is then broadcast to their friends, sort of like a geographic twitter. It gets a little complicated for places with multiple locations such as Starbucks and suffers from the limitation of only being about the immediate moment. Instead of saying to a friend, “let’s have a drink at Ace Bar tomorrow after work,” users have to sit around and wait for an alert, then drop everything to rush out to meet someone who serendipitously happens to be in their vicinity.
For planning, Dopplr provides services focused on travelers. Users can see friends who will be in the same city at the same time and make plans based on this. It obviously has some value to people who travel frequently, but doesn’t provide any other travel related features such as lodging or local information, so its use is very limited and “who will be in the same place as me” is a simple function that is likely to be incorporated into all travel sites. In fact, travel-oriented communities such as Travelpod or RealTravel provide this and much more.
For photos from around the world, the capability to add geotagging metadata to indicate location has led to many creative applications. Flickr was one of the first services to offer this and its map is an engaging way to explore and organize photos in addition to things like text tags. Flickr also provides a comprehensive API which has allowed developers to build their own interesting applications such as Trippermap and loc.alize.us. Locr is another photo service with a very specific geographic presentation.
One of the most robust geographically-oriented communities is at Geocaching, sort of a global hide-and-seek game where people use GPS devices to find caches hidden by other users. Geocachers are a passionate bunch and generally love outdoor adventures. At best the goal is to share personal favorite locations such as a beautiful view or secret hide-away, with the cache more an excuse for the journey.
These examples are quite varied. Some are simple and fall short, while others have very intriguing aspects. All hint at the amazing potential for the social application of geographic information, which is still in its early stages. As technologies advance and people become more accustomed to interacting with spatial data, it will be exciting to see increasingly sophisticated and compelling implementations of location-based social media.
