Platial On MyMaps

This morning Google launched MyMaps and with typical blogospheric drama (which I adore) predictions of the fall of mash-ups were made. Here's my take...

This kind of disruption was inevitable.
There is a rapidly growing geospatial web and they have in many ways elevated the importance of it.

While no entrepreneur is excited about potentially competing with Google, it had to happen. This is an indicator of something very interesting in new kinds of collaborative business models. For example; apis in and out and remixing. There are a number of friend/foe  relationships that spring up when you have alliances and markets with rapidly evolving needs. Our business will be disrupted too in some ways but it was time.

We needed a new conversation to get us beyond the limiting concept of mash-ups. A year ago many of our services looked the same but now you see differentiation start to emerge. As well Google has (for now) carved a small/clear piece of this and hasn't entered into the community aspects. For now, we need to count ourselves among the Google friend/foes which are rapidly increasing!

They haven't (yet) touched the core of our business model, audience or product path. So, here we go onward (but faster and better). :)

Comments

[svelasco]

Privacy. If you could give me a way to keep my maps private and only allow access to those I choose I would have you as my one-and-only map site. Over Google. Over anybody else. Platial has every single other function i'm looking for and a great interface (and great community). Zeemaps allows "private map" publishing but it's buggy and doesn't work at all right now. Google's My Maps only has "unlisted" maps. Give me privacy and i'm yours.

[jason wilson]

Privacy is something that we have known would be critical from the start, but we also knew that our offering would be constantly evolving, and that privacy was one thing that we didn't want to screw up. As we solidify, privacy will be coming into view for Platial.

[Chris Heuer]

kick their butts Dian - I think we need more people willing to compete with Google now, lest they really do become the new Microsoft of their day... I shared some stories of how much you rawk at the Social Media Club meeting in Seattle tonight - coffee on wall street and people in funny white suits... good memories, your insight will serve you well here too...

[web tasarım]

web tasarım

[Gavin P. Quinn]

deisnor, I think you made some great points. I am probably in a similar boat as you, trying to build http://www.grapheety.com. I think it can be good that Google is entering the user-generated mapping area. It gives a lot of credibility to the space. And all those people that say one big competitor will knock out everyone... that is ridiculous. Like most people have noted, Microsoft has had almost the exact same thing for over a year and no one seemed to care. I think Google is under a spotlight right now. So, I say we just dig in, and innovate!

[Zee Source]

The ZeeMaps "private" maps should be functioning properly now (as they have been for a past few months) at http://www.zeemaps.com. Please contact us at [email protected] if there is any issue.