As of today, Instagram has earned its share of enemies. They released their new privacy policy, stating that they are seeking the legal right to sell their customer’s photos to advertisers. This is similar to many other sites, such as Facebook that reserves the same right with anything posted on their site, whether media or information.
Obviously, this has created quite a backlash. Users are removing their accounts en masse, boycotts are being called for, and even the disorganized collection of Internet lurkers that gather under the banner of Anonymous have joined the ‘fight’. It won’t be long until the site is inevitably back peddling in an attempt to appease the users they angers. The apology is sure to be as amusing as the one Netflix gave after their disastrous launch of Quickster.
But for those who aren’t in a blind rage, you might be interested in finding out about some of the tools out there that use Instagram for more than just sharing photos. Like projects that have been opened up to use the service for mapping and geotagging.
Here are four you have to check out.
1. The Beat
Created by Rutgers University, this is a very cool tool. It takes photos from around the US and attached them to Google Street View. Along with an address and a look at the street where it is happening, you can get both an inside and an outside view of the lives of users who have submitted photos to the projects. Sometimes these will be photos of people, sometimes of events or odd things happening around the country. It is a lot of fun, and it updates continiously. All photos have a time telling you how long ago it was submitted.
2. InstaEarth
This is a quick photo map, but a thorough one. You just go to an area, zoom in and check out the photos associated with any area. The downside is that it is still really new, and not a whole lot has been submitted yet. But the ones that have are pretty well done, and there are a lot of views and comments that show people are taking attention. You can submit your own photos, no matter what they are of. Just be sure to read the terms and conditions for photos hosted by the project. I usually recommend this one to travelers who want to post pictures from their trips abroad.
3. Mapstagram
This is another map, but more popular than the one above. Still, it has only managed to gain traction in the States, and it doesn’t have nearly as many photos as you would hope. There are a lot of people following it, however, and it is a great one to keep an eye on.
4. Twitter
Obviously, this isn’t a mapping program. But a lot of people are using Twitter to map and use hashtags to geotag their photos from Instagram. Right now the majority of posts you will see about the photo service is decrying their new policy changes. But once that dies down, you should be able to get a good view of where people are logging photos from.
Do you know of any Instagram mapping tools out there? Let us know in the comments.
WOW! The Beat is very innovative! I can only imagine the data in photos that they have collected thus far. People will be able to see anything, anywhere!
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Yes, definitely, Twitter is a really great tool to map of Instagram photos. But the sad thing is that, Instagram photos are no longer visible right inside the tweets on Twitter and on TweetDeck. :-/
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