When I first became interested in geocoding/geolocation/geotagging I came across a number of applications that use the Flickr API to present geolocated photos. At that time (a few months ago) there were about 1, 400 photos in Flickr with the tag geotagged. Recently, I have been reading about the 11, 000 geotagged images and have been wondering where this big leap came from.
Looking at trend graphs produced by blogpulse, it seems that the attention has a lot to do with the use of Google maps to provide geolocation information. The graph below suggests this:
Interestingly, the limitations of the geolocation service that Google provides gives a big bias to what parts of the world have geotagged photos. In addition, Google Map's less than stellar performance in the UK prompted Steeev to provide a lookup service via streetmap.co.uk (in addition to his most excellent work in providing the original Google script). The site in question is www.geobloggers.com and the next graph strongly supports the conclusion that it has been responsible for the popularity of geotagging in Flickr:
Interestingly, since the Yahoo acquisition of Flickr, the percentage of mentions of Flickr in the blogosphere appears to have leveled out after a clear upward trend.
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