Many thanks to Damien Mulley for his expert advise with this!
Irish mapping service UseAMap.com expands into Facebook
Today UseAMap, an Irish service that allows anyone to create custom
maps for their website or blog announced that they are expanding their
service into Facebook. As a result, 30 Million FaceBook users can put
their own custom maps on their profiles.
Vinny Glennon from UseAMap stated “Web usage statistics show that
FaceBook is the hottest place to be at the moment, with people
spending more and more time there connecting with actual people, and
ignoring traditional websites and blogs. We’re bringing our service to
where the people are at, not expecting them to come to us. This has
always been the philosophy of UseAMap which allows people to make
their own maps and put them where they want for free.”
UseAMap.com allows people to create maps using Google, Yahoo or MSN
and save the map with a simple address such as Useamap.com/ourplace
and allows the user to embed this map on any website, blog and now
also on FaceBook. UseAMap maps are ideal for events and for simple
driving instructions to and from your saved location.
This week Google announced that they were finally allowing their maps
to be embedded too, Glennon does not see them as competition. “We were
a year ahead of Google when it came to embeddable maps and we think as
a small company with lots of ideas, we can always be a year ahead of
them for many other features too. Google has become too big to turn a
good idea into a workable product in a short time frame whereas we are
far more flexible and in the modern web world, that’s what people
want. I hope this product will be seen as modern technology working
for people, not working alongside them.”
About UseAMap and custom maps:
Background: In University, students often got out their MS paint
program to draw rough maps of their house location for a small
party,etc. Not every student went to art classes, and many times
people ended up calling each other asking for directions. Google maps
came and greatly improved the situation. But the web address for
Google maps are incomphrensibly long addresses that cannot be
remembered or easily attached to posters.
The same experience naturally also transfers to business and
education, which is where UseAMap.com comes in and provides simple,
easy to remember map locations for meetings, conferences or simply a
license free alternative to using Ordnance Survey maps of any location
for geography class rooms. With over 100,000 maps generated on the
website over the last 5 months, this example of a public good is set
to remain.
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