How can we use time-based location data to enable real-time exchange, and interaction? Who wants my extra lettuce right now? How can social mapping help us improve our neighborhood? How can we organize legislative outreach by district using social maps? How can I organize a play-date for my kids while traveling?
Maps of public officials evolve to action networks for advocacy; petitions, letter writing and other policy-shaping actions, maps of fallen fruit and local food become real-time local food & garden marketplaces, maps of dangerous intersections and local problems become solutions for safer streets and neighborhood improvements.
People now collaborate on mapmaking but will soon cooperate on many location-based movements on maps related to local food, urban homesteading and local advocacy. Neogeographers already create maps around these topics but will be able to actually organize, trade and transact in the future, all on a map. There are three considerations for the progress on map-based collaboration; timeliness, trust and benefit.
“Right now”, is a value-gap in the current iteration of the Geoweb and a barrier to location-based exchange. The timeliness of services like Twitter which support location will allow for immediate answers to geographic questions. Even street vendors are using Twitter to create real-time food mobs. In many circles Twitter has replaced CraigsList for the sale of goods, barter of tools and apartment hunting. The second issue of trust is familiar to all forms of social media and span safety and quality of recommendation. Currently, personal location-data exist in silos across Facebook , Google maps, Loopt, Brightkite and dozens of other services. As people have better control over extending location-awareness to their trusted networks, trust-worthy information increases. Improvements to timeliness and trust are well underway, however, benefit is a more complex and interesting problem to solve. Many groups use online maps as a guest book or journal. On Frappr, people use the map as a communications tool within a map-based community. But maps can also be an organizing tool. The addition of transactional components to social maps will provide measurable results to communities in the form of polls, resource sharing , legislative communication, action alerts and eventually donations and sales-all on a map. With these concerns addressed, we can facilitate real-time location powered marketplaces and exchanges.
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