People googling other people to learn more about them has become part of modern life. A few months ago I was debating the best way to ship something to a company, so I brought up their location on Google Maps. On a whim, I switched to imagery and saw “head office” was a rural farm (incongruous).
It is common knowledge that lots of businesses (particularly small ones) hope to make themselves look bigger/different than they are. While I’ve always used a consumer mapping engine to figure out directions to a place I’m about to visit, I’ve recently started using aerial imagery to scout the location of some firms prior to doing business with them.
Because I made a decision from Victoria, I depended heavily on aerial imagery during the selection of the location for our new office in Toronto. And yes, I absolutely considered how people might read into possible office addresses based on a bird’s eye spatial query.
If I’m visiting from above, then I imagine lots of other people are doing it too. I wonder if we’re entering an era in which location as seen from above will become increasingly relevant for businesses (especially for small/online businesses that may never have a customer visit their premises). Will growing birds-eye visits fundamentally change site-selection criteria? Might lower-quality premises in a quality area be superior to a nice office in a lower-quality area? Might appearance from above be more relevant than appearance from ground level when determining “quality” and making decisions about where to establish an office?
I heard a story at a conference in May that a head hunter in the US uses http://www.zillow.com/ to check out where a job candidate lives. He said they look at how many cars in the drive way (and the make if the image has high enough resolution) and anything else that they can see from the image that tells something about the candidate. That info is used to help figure out the offer to the candidate for the job.
Interesting. Defensible? I suppose, but as soon as this kind of research drifts into the individual domain I start feeling uneasy. Increasingly sophisticated tools to collect and access public information seem great, until you’re the public information being scrutinized (and it starts to feel like an invasion of privacy). It raises an interesting question; Where does due diligence cross the line and become “geostalking”?
“Geostalking”, now that’s different. Everyday we deal with parties obtaining information. They always want more details, higher resolution imagery, and so on until the tables are turned the other way. We also offer curbside photos of nearly every property in our county. So far the public is at ease, some have even requested we take new photos to show the most recent changes to their properties. Some have even gone as far as sending us their own photos. I think all in all, this is a “personal” decision. What is comfortable to me may not be comfortable to you.