Washington Post Local Explorer Connects the Dots
Important Details: Think local, and you think maps. In the old world, it was Thomas Maps; in the new one, it’s been all Google, as Google Maps have redefined a way in, a way of finding out about local events, culture, businesses, and more, by location.
Now WashingtonPost.com has trumped those first versions of Google Maps, connecting mapping to a wealth of city-based information and displaying it in ways that make the searching and finding useful and intuitive. It’s called Local Explorer.
The Post has connected the dots in, for instance, this sample page from Alexandria, Virginia. The dots include: restaurants, grocery and drug stores, hospitals, libraries, movie theaters, museums, places of worship, post offices, recent home sales, schools, crime statistics, metro stops, and county borders. Visitors can use the basic Google map as a point of departure for all that information, some of which has been created by the Post and some of which has been licensed. Where the Post has an editorial review of a restaurant, it’s a click or two away from the map. On these hyper-local pages, the map is surrounded with other local information and commerce, from calendars and classifieds, to statistical snapshots and local news.
For other news-oriented mapping trends check out the “Cool Google Map Uses,” page on at cyberjournalist.org, the site of the Online News Association. There’s a beginning list of weather, traffic, and entertainment ideas easy to adapt, and more than 50 comments on it, rich sources for ideas and partnerships. In addition, publishers can find still more ideas at GoogleMapsMania blog. Finally, there’s ChicagoCrime.org, mapping crime by local district.
Implications: It’s a savvy re-thinking of a local website. Sure WashingtonPost.com, by several indices the most successful local site in the country, has its familiar home page, chockablock with news stories. But you can bet that for many users these local, map-based pages will be there entry points into the site, maybe for daily use. That’s of course the commercial point – bring readers more directly to commerce that’s relevant to them, whether it’s buying a used refrigerator out of the classifieds, finding a podiatrist, or seeking the best schools for their kids.
The Post’s point here is in making information of all kinds actionable and interactive. While today it recommends bookmarking or sending yourself relevant links to keep, we can see the mobile value of such products. The race is on as to who will get there first, GYM aggregators – Yahoo! has pieced together a similar though less robust product – or smart local sites, pouring everything they know into a mapping interface. And as Google and firms like Idelix work to create new and better map advertising opportunities, publishers will be better poised to monetize map development. The race around city streets goes to the swift.