After reading about web mapping and GIS this week, I again am reminded of the social media app Instagram that I wrote about last week. In addition to being a great example of a social network some people use almost everyday, Instagram also serves as an example of how web mapping has been adapted for the benefit and leisure of these social networks. When the GPS feature is turned on with any smartphone, the phone itself uses the geographic information collected to keep track of where each individual photo was taken. When a person posts a picture on Instagram, the app uses this data to place the picture on a map according to where the data says the image was taken with startling accuracy. For example if you look at my account, you can see all the places I have been in Southern California that I have posted about online. You can tell where I spend most of my time by seeing where the most number of posts come from.
When I zoom in over Los Angeles, and UCLA specifically, you can see exactly where on campus and in Westwood I was when I took the photo and uploaded it to Instagram.
Every time I add a post, a new image appears on the map, thus making this a real-time, dynamic web map that is constantly being expanded.
The adaptation of web mapping for personalized use has proved to be very effective and many examples are now a part of our daily schedule. Google Maps get us to our destination, Find My iPhone helps us track down lost or stolen phones, different calendar apps track down the location of events and lay them out on a map for their user, and Yelp scans local restaurants and rates them based on user reviews and distance from you. However, the application of web mapping for individual use does cross some privacy boundaries of personal privacy. For example, if one were to have their Instagram account public, anyone could look at their personalized picture map and figure out exactly where he or she lived. Helicopter parents have a whole new way of tracking their teens by using the Find My iPhone app to follow their movements 24/7 and looking at the GPS location data attached to their smartphone photos. As with any new technology, boundaries must be set when it is applied to one’s personal life.