TAPC - Community Mapping Panel

Brad Forrest of O’Reilly moderated a panel of Internet mapping type companies about community created content.

User Role

The role will vary based on the end-user and application, based on “tolerance.” So one way is in partnership with a “trusted source,” like Tele Atlas. Another is for users to give us content, those are places that accuracy is not such a big deal (say a Starbucks vs. an exit on a highway).
- Al Cooley, TA

We want to try to be all things to all people and try to address input as broadly as possible.
- Howard Steinberg, Ask.com

Feeback should be an ordinary part of the user experience. Was the map right? Wrong? That information goes back to data providers. The user’s role should also be in creating the personalized content needed, including things like upload photos.
- Christian Dwyer, MapQuest

The users role should be whatever the user wants it to be. When they give us data (say via Flickr) we need to be good users/mantainers/aggregators of it.
- Mark Law, Yahoo!

User content is king, since it’s what makes a personalized experience possible. Sharing one’s location is the most personal information. Women in general are less likely to want to share locations, but men want to know where everyone is.
- Sean Murphy, TCS

Who owns user uploaded data?

Each customer (say AAA) owns the relationship with end user.
- TCS

No one wants to read the license, so we tie it to the log in. Folks are more responsible when it’s not anonymous. On Flickr Yahoo! can do what it wants, but copyright is shared between user and Yahoo!
- Yahoo!

It’s a permissions based approach. The user should have the option to share or not. It should be tied to an ID.
- Mapquest

Users are becoming more savvy and want to participate in making the experience better for all. The more you put in, the more you’ll get out.
Ask.com

Everything is very transparent; some of our community programs are open about that you are sharing with everyone.
- Tele Atlas

Mashups as feedback? What are you seeing?

Helping educate the public on what’s possible with location. And, highlights the need for personalization.
- TA

Opening APIs is very important. They want easy to use APIs that are easy to annotate. Some are relevant to a few folks others to larger communities.
- MapQuest

We have lots of APIs, but also some “building blocks” to make it easier. Now with Flash API - can put maps in movies, 3D visualization, etc. What we learning from developers: they want more data available, more data publishing, ability to share data beyond the mashup (an index of geo content), an aggregate API (for Flickr, Map API, Local API, etc.).
- Yahoo!

Our customers want to aggregate all kinds of data on maps, that is, put all the feeds on the map. They want us to aggregate those into a single feed they can use.
- TCS

When will location automatically be in Web Map portals

Soon/it’s already here. We post that on our Yahoo! Messenger. (I’m at xxx.) We need to figure out how to use/not use it. Europe is pretty ok with sharing locations; other places like SE Asia it’s not as acceptable.
- Yahoo!

What’s the benefit of Yahoo! of the APIs?

We talk about that all the time! Two faces: everyone is doing it, so we need to and the innovations are beyond what we can’t do due to resources. Monetization is a challenge. Do we add ads? Total transactions cost vs. consumer sites, is small.
- Yahoo!

Cost is not as expensive as marketing would be for commercial services.
- MapQuest

PR, free R&D, inspiration, recruiting tool
- Brady Forrest