GOOGLE MAPS BECOMES A SOCIAL NETWORK

We have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, YouTube… and now Google Maps becomes yet another social network. Google Maps is a service developed by Google with which you can find the location of a city, address, hotel, or attraction on the internet. It allows observing maps in real time and moving around them to know how to get anywhere. Also to know what means of transport allow you to get there earlier and what route should or can be followed
Is there anyone left in the world who hasn’t used it to find exact locations? Few should be what have not yet used the Maps application for this service it offers.

Due to the serious consequences caused by the happy pandemic that has visited us in 2020, the ingenuity has multiplied by a thousand. What do I say by a thousand? It has been multiplied by a hundred thousand! Local commerce is experiencing many difficulties and that is where Google Maps can do something for them.
Google Maps is presented as a great opportunity for cafes, restaurants and small businesses that can build a community around them and increase sales. People can get local recommendations and up-to-date information on where to go and what to do. And this is precisely the function that has led Google to turn its Maps into a social network like the ones we already know well enough.

The evolution of Google Maps

From now on in Google Maps you can find and share more information about places or establishments. What Google basically seeks is to expand the concept of Local Guides. Everyone knows that Google was crazy to have a social network to compete with Twitter and Facebook. You’ve already tried Google+ and almost succeeded. But despite forcing users to create an account to use any Google product, they never used it. Last year it ended up closing it after several security scandals.

Google has been allowing for some time in an experimental way, to follow the Local Guides. They offered advice and improved the user experience in each location. Now the functionality is extended to other users who can follow whoever they want on Google Maps. With your new Community Feed you have created an experience very similar to that of a social network. And it has just added a tool that turns it into a platform where users follow each other. Now you can follow your friends to know what route they take, what comments they leave about certain places, if they do it openly.

From now on, users who have shared content publicly will become users potentially followed by other users. You can create a profile in the same way as you do in any other social network. It will show the number of followers you have with the option of the follow button and the profiles will be public or private.

 

What’s new in the Google Maps app

Taking advantage of these months of closure due to the pandemic and that the cities were empty they have developed new features in the application. An example would be the implementation of visual enhancements. Now Maps allows us to set favorites in the place we are and see in a short time the places of interest and monuments on our route. This new update has icons and graphics of monuments quickly, before finding an emblematic place took much longer. New York and Paris already have this novelty, at the moment in Spain only in Madrid and Barcelona you can enjoy these indications.

But focusing on the topic at hand, there will be new topic filters in Google Maps profiles. So you can see the topics and places that people share the most, such as pizza, camping, parks …

Another important detail is that a configuration has been incorporated so that our Google Maps profile can be easily managed and customized.

The new Google Maps feed

The new Google Maps feed will appear in the “Explore” tab and will show updates and recommendations from local sources related to the location where we are. Therefore, you will only have to open the application and select “Explore”, Google will automatically adapt the contents around the interest shown previously. We can discover if they have added a new dish in our favorite restaurant or discover new hiking trails, in addition, we can give “Likes” to the publications.

On the other hand, Google Maps is improving elements such as the integration of shared trips, signaling of pedestrian crossings or building numbers. The idea is to improve the interface when visiting unknown places that we don’t usually go to.

We have to keep in mind that every day, people send more than 20 million contributions. Recommendations of your favorite places, business service updates, reviews, recent ratings, photos, answers to other people’s questions, updated addresses, and more. It is a new way of discovering everything that is happening around us.

In short, the quinceañera Google Maps app that we all use to organize vacations could be the next kind of social network for the company.