the one after the first post.... :)

Hello world:

So, somewhat in line with Web 2.0 Training, this post is all about Flickr and social networking media, albeit with a more than slight bias towards a particular interest (or rather, current field of study) of mine: anything and everything GIS (Geographic Information Systems).

The concept and practice of tagging is a powerful tool, as I'm sure many of us are already aware. The advent of location-based tagging, however, is relatively new to the landscapes of popular social media.

The first thing I noticed upon opening up Flickr's Homepage was that a 'geotagging' tool was available. Naturally, I clicked ahead (bringing me to http://www.flickr.com/map/). At the time, the total number of geotagged items was a fairly staggering 118,734,14 - of which 2,335,116 items were in Australia.

www.flickr.com/map

So, what of this 'geotagging' tool? Why would it be important or interesting? Or relevant?

As it was put to me: 'everything that happens, happens somewhere'.

Locational knowledge is powerful information  - as many would know, for example, in the library context. If you know where an item is (or ought to be), then you can find it, retreive it and use it. In terms of Flickr, you can use the visual media of a map to locate images of interest. Or you can query the map for images based on locational search terms (eg search for images whose tagging location is 'Australia').  Users are united with information or other users based on location.

The shift towards location based information seems particularly linked to the phenomenal increase in the use of mobile devices (phones, ipads etc) and adaptation to this can be seen in well-known sites such as Facebook (introduction of the 'Places' tool). Increasingly, there are sites whose operation are primarily based on the location of users - such as the location-based social networking web and mobile application Foursquare, or Google's own 'Google Buzz' (simply Google 'geosocial networking' for more info on all this....).

What does everyone one else think about the increasingly pervasive locational focus of social (and other) media? Should it raise privacy concerns? How much 'power' does ones' location really have? What are the marketing implications? Social and cultural implications? Information management implications?

Lots of things to consider here...Please feel free to comment on it :)

Happy blogging folks; til next week!