Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Spotsy – iPhone app to discover the world through Instagram

itunes.apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 43 posts

Re: Show HN: Spotsy – iPhone app to discover the world through Instagram

#3

Post by wlindner »

bitsweet wrote: post #2

Nice work. I've always wondered why Instagram has made it so difficult to find photos by location. Update: why do you require my Instagram username/pwd when they support OAuth? Not a fan

Thanks! The app was designed by @alexsailer and developed by me, @wlindner.

I've always wondered the same thing, and I think it's because all of the location data in the Instagram app comes from Foursquare. It would be really competitive with Foursquare if Instagram could search locations, so I don't think Foursquare will let them. That being said, all of this could change with Facebook places instead of Foursquare locations: http://www.fastcompany.com/3028166/instagram-testing-faceboo...

Re: Show HN: Spotsy – iPhone app to discover the world through Instagram

#4

Post by wlindner »

bitsweet wrote: post #2

Nice work. I've always wondered why Instagram has made it so difficult to find photos by location. Update: why do you require my Instagram username/pwd when they support OAuth? Not a fan

RE not using OAuth: I did that because users had a lot of trouble using the oauth login, so I basically just pass the users credentials to the oauth page. If you prefer oauth just press "Forgot Password" in the login popup and press the go back link, it will bring you to the standard Instagram login and will work the same.

Re: Show HN: Spotsy – iPhone app to discover the world through Instagram

#7

Post by danso »

Instagram's search-by-geo-coordinates endpoint is one feature that makes the API so valuable and interesting...Other services have it, of course, but Instagram's version has higher value because geolocation is turned on by default...I read somewhere that maybe 2-5% of Tweets have geodata, whereas Instagram content is at 30 to 50%.

The investigative newsroom ProPublica (disclosure: my former employer) had a fun use-case, in which they knew of a lobbyist-politician ski resort retreat, looked up the location of the resort, and then used Instagram's location/date filters to see who was on the trip (at least one lobbyist posted a photo from their own publicly identifiable account): http://www.propublica.org/nerds/item/a-super-simple-tool-to-...

Re: Show HN: Spotsy – iPhone app to discover the world through Instagram

#8

Post by maxerickson »

danso wrote: post #7

Instagram's search-by-geo-coordinates endpoint is one feature that makes the API so valuable and interesting...Other services have it, of course, but Instagram's version has higher value because geolocation is turned on by default...I read somewhere that maybe 2-5% of Tweets have geodata, whereas Instagram content is at 30 to 50%. The investigative newsroom ProPublica (disclosure: my former employer) had a fun use-ca…

We need to develop a social norm that sharing something is not necessarily permission to publicize it. There's lots of contexts where it is probably fine, but I think there are also quite some contexts where it isn't so fine.

I'm not trying to get up on a high horse and preach, it's just kind of gross to completely change the sort of attention that is being directed at something that someone shared.

I know that some of the response to this will be to not post it publicly if you don't want people to see it, but that's exactly the thought I want to push back against, just because something is available at a public url doesn't mean it is a cool thing to point reddit at it.

Post reply on HN