Pin Drop

Snap Map moves us closer to the perfect map content interface

You know that thing where you spin a globe and put your finger down to stop it, and where ever your finger lands, that’s where you’re going to move? Yeah, I’ve never done that. Actually, I’m not sure anyone has ever done that outside of the movies. Still, cool idea. And it reminds me of something I used to do with Google Earth.

I used to love to use early versions of that software to pick a random place and zoom in as far as I could to see what I could find. It’s one thing to see a point on a map. It’s another to be able to see what it looks like on the ground — even if just a digital representation. It was like SimCity, but real life.¹

Fast forward a decade, and the team behind Periscope had built the next version of this concept. From the get-go, it was drop a pin on a map to get a glimpse into that part of the world right then and there. The fact that they were able to pull this off with real time video under Twitter remains amazing.

It feels like Periscope was very close to nailing the Marauder’s Map for the real world. Snap Map feels like it’s one step even closer.

This revelation and functionality is nothing new.² Nor is it perfect. Perhaps it was the recent launch of the product on the web that drove it home for me. More likely, it was seeing the mass protests by students this past week, walking out of their classrooms to demand action on guns. Seeing just one such protest on social media is powerful. Seeing hundreds of them all around the country was incredible. And being able to zoom in and out of a map to give you a sense of place is just a great interface for connecting to this content.

With such things, the UI and curation seems to be key. Periscope has had a map view for a while, but it’s pretty noisey. And the live requirement hurts it a bit. Snap’s map view focuses on hot spots and drops you into potentially interesting content with one click. And it doesn’t have to be live video shot with the express purpose of “going live”. It can just be recent content posted to Snapchat itself. Which, as we know, the kids do naturally these days.

Anyway, we keep inching closer to this general experience: being able to drop a pin on a map and experiencing that place as if we were there. Who knows, maybe with a few more iterations from a few more products, that ends up being a killer app for VR. It feels like being fully immersed in content shot on the ground at a specific location has to happen at some point.

And I continue to believe it’s a map that’s the perfect interface to establish and ground us in the reality of what we’re seeing — even if technically, virtually.

¹ To be more precise, it was more like Streets of SimCity, a game that was the best thing ever for about 30 minutes — drive through a city you created! — then none of us ever played again. Also, shout out to SimCopter.

² I still miss the map view on Instagram. Also, anyone else remember Panoramio? It was another aspect I used to love about Google Earth (real photos shot all around the world, but with a focus on geolocation to tag them in the right place on the virtual Earth).