EXIF Data and Unique Content

Only two groups of people ever used of Google+ in the early days: insider fan boys and professional photographers. Sort of a strange combination.

The fan boys were there because they'd already been invited into beta testing long before public release, and photographers began joining because they discovered uploaded photos retained all their exif data and thought that was a big deal.

Most websites at the time would reduce the size of uploaded images through some manner of shrinking, compressing, and stripping out exif data. This made things much faster and made sense because computer screens couldn't display anywhere near the resolution of real photographs and exif data was of no use to anyone.

But for professionals wishing to share and appreciate photos taken by themselves and others, exif data is part of a photograph. It helps explain what's being seen in ways the rest of us don't get. Google just wanted to keep more details about everyone's pictures, but photographers found tremendous value in this feature.

The most important thing exif data does is identify an image as truly unique. Original content, so to speak. Likewise, it helps identify stock images used on thousands of websites, content that clearly isn't unique to any of those sites.

Because of this I believe Google will continue using exif data as a way to identify unique content for some time. This is one reason Second Glance Digital Media is happy to provide photography services for clients (locally of course), and encourages the use of original photos throughout your website and blog.