Crowdsourcing has become a trend that people share ideas or information to benefit others and in exchange for whether love, glory, love, or more information. What happens when it comes to mapping system?
About five days ago, Apple launched Apple Maps Connect, a tool designed for business owners to both verify and submit new information about their locations, like a phone call and PIN code to the business’ phone number. In addition, companies can add links to their social network, as Facebook, Twitter……..
“No iPhone user wanted to kill Google Maps”
Apple Map came out two years ago, and has led to many complaints for its inaccuracy. Mostly for lacking a significant amount of detail and omit public transit directions. Problems occurs especially outside the U.S., even several major landmarks are labeled inaccurately or even worse, misplaced. As a result, iPhone or iPad users still turn to Google Map for searching and planning routes.
“Catching up on Google”
This is not the first example for Map Application using crowdsourcing. Last year Google acquired Waze, a system which its mapping and traffic information are built by 70,000 volunteer map editors and 15 million active users, and later that year Google added a crowdsourcing element to Google Maps which allows users to upload panorama street view. The company did so to keep its leading place in both website and mobile mapping.
“Owning context is what matters”
For mapping system, accuracy is already a basic requirement. (Google still outperform its competitors for this) People expect more from it, such as knowing the real time condition, sharing your location with friends mutually. I think maybe for Apple it could take advantage of it, like the usage of FaceTime, maybe they could create a social map guide in the future.
Do you think this will work on raising the number of people using Apple Maps? I have a Pad, but still uses Google Map? Maybe you can share why or why not you will use it.
Reference:
– Apple is now crowdsourcing business listings to help make Maps better
-Google buys traffic mapping service Waze
-Google Maps vs. Apple Maps
http://gizmodo.com/5918176/google-maps-vs-apple-maps-a-side-by-side-comparison
I like the Crowdsourcing idea but I think this does’nt change the accuracy of Apple Maps. Google Maps will still be superior to Apple Maps in my opinion. I understand that Apple wants their own software but in this case they have to give credits to Google. Instead of adding Social features, it will be better if they focus on the accuracy of the maps. After they fix their maps they can look for more features but now it’s just a wast of time.
As a Google Maps user, I think the Apple Maps is still too similar to Google Maps right now. For me the most important aim of this app is to easily get me to the location I want to be. It has to be accurate, easy and fast, so it isn’t necessary to have many different additional functions. Apple Maps doesn’t have big advantages in comparison with Google Maps that will make me switch from application. So for now I would’t replace Apple Maps for Google Maps.
In order to make it work, Apple should make a whole new platform, with a lot of new features, so that people actually have a reason to use Apple Maps instead of Google Maps. By doing this, they also should definitely change their application name, so people aren’t already expecting it to be almost the same. Because I do think there is an opportunity for businesses, in this case Apple, to create a new application that also has the same main function as Google Maps: getting you to your location, but add more features that make it more engaging and has functions that are related to the main function. For example they could add similar functions that Foursquare has and also more Events and trips & vacations specialized functions. Hereby, they could also first improve the accuracy by improving the walking route function, as many people I know still can’t seem to find the way using this function.