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Comment by btbuildem | Hacker News Reader

Wow this could use a tl;dr .. Scanned through but didn't come across anything of substance.

Is there a takeaway to this?

THey're saying you can use the geo-tags on pictures (along with the site's ability to find pictures taken in a certain area) to determine whether you'd like to go there or not, and plan your trip accordingly. They keep saying "guidebook", like you'd make your own list of destinations in that area that you want to visit.

I basically made our Tokyo tour without using a professional tour guide, and knowing this about Instagram (assuming it applies to Tokyo) would have been very nice at the time.

Edit: After playing with it a bit, I don't see how this would work well at all. I was unable to "explore" without knowing exactly what I wanted to explore in the first place, so it wasn't any good for planning a trip to a new place.

You could browse common hashtags like #tokyo or the location tags of the major neighborhoods, but you're right that this works better when you have a list of destinations or places that you're curious about and would like to see what they're really like. I do this myself, but even I admit the author's point, or terminology at least, is exaggerated.

Sometimes I bookmark restaurants in NYC after seeing some particularly good food on Instagram.

tl;dr Location-based photofeeds are like surveillance cameras and give you a taste of a destination in real-time to help you make a decision.

Many of the most popular accounts and aggregators will post "latergrams" and since the most popular photos are featured at the top, one should consider that the feed is realtime relative to when users post but not necessarily realtime relative to when photos were taken.

For example, in a big city like NYC you'll see shots posted with snow even in the middle of summer.

yes. and platforms like Hootsuite lets you easily queue up and post them at a pre-scheduled time.

my thought is. is there an interest for hyperlocal/true realtime instagram clone. so people can really discover what's around them

I wonder if Instagram preserves the metadata for capture time, etc on posted images.

The TLDR created as a reply to this is good, but perhaps the article highlights the need for an service that integrates the app siloed data into a coherent experience rather than shuffling through apps.

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