Where 2.0 - First Take

Where 2.0 billed itself as "The future of mapping and local search." My take: These first sessions are not really about the future of mapping. There are others that can speak to the technology’s future but this was not evident today. Where is about local search and more correctly about social networking using location technology. Presentations from Platial.com, Plazes.com, Projectxtech.com Zoptco.com were all about social networking: People adding context to points of interest, personal information to add rich content so that others can appreciate and understand what others have experienced. Photos, anecdotes, opinions, etc. are organized by this second generation of websites (not sure they are viable companies just yet so I hesitate to put them in the category of "viable concern") that go beyond mashups. The conference aims to put some context to the growing consumer mapping opportunities that have risen from the APIs offered by Google, Micosoft, etc. There were interesting presentations on privacy and "map spam", issues sure to impact the applications in the consumer space. But it would be a disservice to attendees to call this the future of mapping. There are some great applicaions that were presented but this is just one facet of the location technology industry. Consumer mapping is fun, cool, and creates a buzz but it does not necessarily end up in a viable business model. Much of what I see is "let’s throw an application out there and see if people come." And yes, some will end up as viable businesses and that’s the part of what this conference offers attendees: to see a "part" of the future of mapping…but not the whole future.