Social networks accessible via phones all over the world leave a certain imprint on people's lives. They want to share not only photos, videos and thoughts, but also where they are. Marking places on the map, later you can return there in memories. This is what geo-tagging is for.
What it is?
Perhaps the ancestor of this phenomenon can be considered the inscriptions on the back of the photographs, which everyone probably met while browsing through an old family album. Now, when commemorative shots most often do not have a physical medium, and are viewed only on the screen of a digital device, the so-called geo-positioning or geo-tagging comes to the rescue. What it is?
Gigabytes of media content daily generated by Internet users contain a lot of information. Among other things, there is now the opportunity to embed information about the current whereabouts of a person who uploads a photo, video or just an article there. It is enough to select the appropriate item, for example, "Indicate location", after which the device will determine its coordinates and offer them as a reference. So geo-tagging in your phone or computer is just a couple of extra clicks. But was this really a real need?
Development history
Not everyone knows that every modern photograph contains the so-called metadata: date and time of shooting, camera model, mode, etc. Among other things, there are coordinates, as well as altitude, and this is also geo-tagging. What is this in terms of technology? Just another module, which is now present almost everywhere.
This was made possible thanks to the global positioning system - GPS. Initially, this technology, developed in the 1970s, was available only to the US military, but later everyone began to use it. The use of this system can hardly be overestimated, since it is also used by scientists in their research.
The modern use of GPS
Thanks to the ubiquitous presence of receivers, the global positioning system is successfully used in many areas of life. Firstly, it is used by rescuers to, without wasting time, send help to someone who dials their number. Secondly, geologists and surveyors, like cartographers, can thus facilitate their work. In addition, almost any vehicle in the world is navigated using GPS. Finally, not so long ago, this technology was also adopted by marketers - with some smartphone settings, once in a certain area, you can get a message, for example, about a restaurant or a store nearby. Fortunately, this is not a very popular solution yet.
And also GPS and geo-tagging are a great help for a traveler. Instead of using a photo album and relying on an imperfect human memory, you can load the photo into a special program that will place flags and frames on the world map. In addition, the most popular social networks recognize this information automatically.
Prospects
The vast majority of information followed by location marks is photographs. And no wonder: people’s craving to see the world, the popularity of travel blogs - all this made geo-tagging extremely popular. What does this mean? That if you want, you can track the movement of each specific user. Of course, it is every person’s personal business to disclose this kind of information about themselves or not, but GPS modules are already built into so many devices, and not everyone is puzzled by their settings. So you can provide such information to everyone, without even knowing it. Of course, geo-tagging is convenient, but it is worth remembering that each coin has two sides.