Data Quality of Points of Interest in Selected Mapping and Social Media Platforms

Abstract

A variety of location based services, including navigation, geo-gaming, advertising, and vacation planning, rely on Point of Interest (POI) data. Mapping platforms and social media apps oftentimes host their own geo-datasets which leads to a plethora of data sources from which POIs can be extracted. Therefore it is crucial for an analyst to understand the nature of the data that are available on the different platforms, their purpose, their characteristics, and their data quality. This study extracts POIs for seven urban regions from seven mapping and social media platforms (Facebook, Foursquare, Google, Instagram, OSM, Twitter, and Yelp). It analyzes the POI data quality regarding coverage, point density, content classification, and positioning accuracy, and also examines the spatial relationship (e.g. segregation) between POIs from different platforms.