Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Google announced the release of a new addition to its Google Maps platform at the Where 2.0 conference this week. The Street View feature enables users to view 360 degrees of static street-level images. In a Street View enabled area users are able to navigate and zoom to 16x without leaving the image window. The first phase of the rollout covers five US cities – New York, San Francisco along with much of the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, Miami, Denver, and Las Vegas. If you live in one of these areas you can likely go online and take a look at a 3-D image of you home or office.

The 360 degree images which make the service possible were created using an eleven-lens, GPS enabled camera developed by Immersive Media. The Calgary-based company is capable of mapping large areas by mounting the camera on the roof of a car. Google describes the technology as “immersive photography.”

Microsoft’s recently launched Bird’s Eye Views feature for its Virtual Earth and Live Search platforms provides  similarly disconcerting ability to zoom in on static images of your home, business, or vital pieces of infrastructure . The two services are comparable with the main distinction being that the MS offering is from a 45 degree, north-facing, bird’s eye view.

Now, as marketers, all we need is a hybrid map for businesses or special offers. Think dynamic information superimposed on an image of a storefront or office. A tool that allows users to confine search to a visually selected area would also be nice. With steady improvements in web-based mapping functionality expect to see an explosion of location-based mashups very soon.

Thanks Anna and David.

Dan Neumann