As Google Maps extends its dominance in the social mapping world, mapping startups are having trouble competing. Platial, a Kleiner Perkins-backed social mapping startup, is heading to the deadpool.
Platial, “the people’s atlas,” allowed users to make and share their own maps. Using Google Maps API, Platial let anyone put locations markers over any point on the map they’ve visited and then annotate it with pictures and comments. You could easily embed and share your maps on other sites. In 2007, Platial acquired a competitor in the social mapping space, Frappr. In the blog post announcing Platial’s demise, it wasn’t clear what the exact reason was for the site to close its doors but the startup said it would be updating its blog with details about the shutdown in the near future. → Read More
As Google expands their social mapping features, competitors are regrouping and refocusing. Kleiner Perkins backed Platial, headquartered in Portland, is announcing the acquisition of chief competitor Frappr this morning. Frappr co-founder Kun Gao will join Platial as part of the deal. Platial CEO Di-Ann Eisnor says the combined companies will reach 15 million unique users per month and will store 100 million user-generated location-based points of data, including photos, videos, reviews, stories and people (see examples here and here). 25% of all distributed map widgets on the Internet will be served via the platform. Frappr never took outside financing. Platial raised two rounds. They took $800,000 in angel funding in October 2005 from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Omidyar Network, Ram Shriram, Georges Harik, Jack Dangermon, and Ron Conway. In February 2007 they raised an additional $2.6 million from Keynote Ventures, with participation from most of the previous investors. → Read More
The multimedia and user-generated online atlas service Platial will announce a new live offering called Today Nearby at the Where 2.0 conference starting tomorrow. The new service will combine RSS feeds of news, photos, videos, events and places with Google Maps and Google Earth. Content will be mapped from Reuters, Flickr, Eventful, YouTube and other users’ maps. Updates to locations of your choice will also be available for subscription. Platial is one of a number of services that allow users to easily create their own maps on top of Google’s API, but it’s notable for its rapid adoption and financial backing. The company says that Platial hosted 200,000 place maps in 300 cities in its first 5 months since launch. See, for example, Public Biofuel Stations (surprisingly, all East Coast US) or this guy’s Hopeless Romantic Map, chronicling a world’s worth of personal heartbreak, apparently over one woman. The company’s backers include Kleiner Perkins, Omidyar Network, Tim O’Reilly and Clay Shirky. Platial’s newest service makes sophisticated, if logical use of RSS feeds from a wide variety of sources. Leveraging so many syndicated multimedia sources could position Platial well in a field that includes competitors such as Wayfaring, CommunityWalk, Frappr and others. Each of these services has a unique feature set, but display of multimedia and news from off site is particularly compelling. That will be even more true if users are able in the future to layer selected feeds over their own created maps or make some other creative integration of this new offering with the basic Platial service. The Today Nearby service seems to act primarily as a secondary offering beyond map creation; it will be used for monitoring place-based multimedia, events and maps made by Platial users who are concerned with the same locations you are. → Read More
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