Thomas Hawk's digital connection covers the release yesterday of flickr's new photo mapping service called Geotagging. If you are a flickr addict then this new feature will impress. It allows members to post an image on flickr with a link to a detailed map of where the photo was taken. Hawk writes:

What makes Flickr's new geotagging tool so strong in my opinion is that it is tied to their organizer which I've always felt is the single best and most impressive part of the Flickr interface. The way it works is pretty simple. You simply find a location using Yahoo! Maps (you can enter an address, airport code, city, etc. or just navigate around the map until you find where you want to go) and then from the organizer's thumbnail bar below you simply drag and drop your photos on to the map in the appropriate location and you are finished. Like a lot of things at Flickr, simple and elegant.

Social-networking and Web 2.0 services like flickr are changing the way people come together. The more they "spatialize" their services using real world references the more useful those services will become to the public at large. Already there are a host of B2B applications out there that benefit from this kind of geographical linking. One can only wonder what new markets will soon open up as a result of this consumer facing service.