Review my mapping startup idea | Hacker News Reader

Review my mapping startup idea

mapfaire.com

11 pointssudhirj12 comments

I've made an MVP for a service that lets you create a customized map with your points on it - can be used as a store locator / office listing / shop finder, anything.

Any thoughts / feedback?

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No offence, but aren't you six years late on this?

This looks like one of the hundreds of startups launched in 2004 with the idea of "Put pins on a Google Map and save it in a database". Lots of those startups got funding for it, and they've all run their course.

Since the functionality you're planning to build is now actually built into Google Maps itself, what's your purpose with this thing?

From an implementation standpoint, I'd ditch the "name your map" and "log into google" steps. Start off with a randomly generated unique URL and let the user immediately start sticking pins into a map. If they decide to "save" at some point, you can hit them up for account details. That's the standard way of doing things like this these days.

Agreed, this seems to overlap completely with Google Places: http://www.google.com/lbc

I see your old map app and a raise you a collaborative multi-user map app http://multimap.wakawakafoobar.info/

Multiple people can view and control the map in realtime. nodejs, socket.io, dnode, and google map api.

Can you give a description of your service? "Put yourself on the map" doesn't really explain the concept of your service.

I think it's a 'tinyurl for location'

How is that a startup? Is my lolcat site a startup too?

Not necessarily the best example:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1916286,00....

(Building a Media Empire Around I Can Has Cheezburger)

Sudhir, it looks nice. Can you please tell us more about it and how it can be useful to people?

I'm looking at it from the pov of small businesses - if you want to make a store locator, you can do it here in a few minutes.

Same thing for businesses who want to help customers get to their restaurants, bars, shops, etc.

I'm looking at allowing businesses to brand the map with their own colors and logo, so they can effectively have a branded locator without the development cost.

In case you're interested, OpenStreeMap (http://www.openstreetmap.org/) is a free wiki map of the world. As an option instead of Google Maps.

Sudhirj,

I really like the 37signals-esque appearance you gave it.

Please email me... I have a few ideas I'd like to share with you privately.

Congrats on launching something. Ignore the haters. I have to agree with iampims, people will give this 10 seconds before moving on, and it's just not clear what it is for. I would recommend fixing your tagline as a first priority so people know exactly what the service does. Goood luck!

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