Staying updated on what's going on in the world through our friends, no matter where in the world they are, is one of the benefits of social networking sites. Unfortunately, what you'll be finding out from your friends can be a little limited. If you want to broaden your horizon, you'll need a different approach and a different app.

Pictulize: What's Going On?, developed by the developer with the same name, gives you the pulse of the earth in real time. It calls itself a “spaciotemporal” network, allowing users to check what's happening at a specific place in the world.

You'll need to create a Pictulize account if you want to tell the world what's going on in your side of the planet. Start by taking a picture of anything you want to share. Follow it up with a comment of less than 120 words and then hit the Pictulize! button. That will post your image for other Pictulize users to see.

At the top of the screen you can find the tabs for Pictulize, Feed, Grid and Map. Above them you can see your own profile, photos you've uploaded and the app's settings.

Tapping on the Grid will let you see photos from other users. If you want to be specific, you can tap on Near Me or use the search function to find exactly what you're looking for with keywords and by specifying a from and to date. Tap on any one of the photos and you can see it clearly with its location underneath and the uploader's comment. You can like the image and leave a comment of your own. If you find yourself squinting at the screen, simply tap on the image and you'll be brought to a higher resolution copy of it so you can enjoy the gorgeous details.

If you like a particular users' posts, you can visit their profiles. There, you can choose to view their other uploads or follow them. After you've chosen to follow a user, you can now see all the photos they upload from your Feed.

Tap on the Map to bring up your location. Pinch to zoom out and you can see blue dots where other Pictulize users have geotagged their photos. If a number of photos have been geotagged with the same location, you can tap on that location's blue dot and see all the thumbnails at the bottom of the screen. You can scroll through them and if something catches your eye, tap on the thumbnail to see the picture better.

Pictulize lets you toggle your image quality and your GPS lock. You can also set it to Auto-tweet when you Pictulize images.

While testing the app on my HTC Sensation, I experienced some force close errors while browsing the Map and while browsing someone's profile. Despite this, Pictulize's own interface was easy to navigate. For a free app, Pictulize is also suprisingly ads-free. Nothing is going to distract you from your photo browsing experience.

Wanna keep tabs on the earth's pulse and let people know what's going on in your side of the world? Download Pictulize: What’s Going On? from the Google Play Store today.