10 Reasons Why Twitter Needs a Map

And why we took the effort to build it

1. Experiences, not just places. I’m a Foursquare user. I do check-ins. And like everybody else, I don’t know why. The reason might be simple: I want to show off, I want to make my friends know how cool are the places I go to. But still, I can’t get no satisfaction… maybe because a check-in is extremely poor in meaning. I’m a Twitter user as well. And I realised I only find any meaning in a check-in when I share it trough Twitter, because I’m adding something more about my experience in that place. It’s not just where “I’m at” but also what “I’m up to”. It’s not even a “tip” or a review. Places are experiences, not just places. So why not directly tweet a place? Do I need Foursquare at all? Give us a map that works like Twitter, please.
2. A catered map. I don’t know if that’s good or not, but my Twitter feed is my primary source of information. Being a designer, I follow many great designers, and I get many great news from them. With time, I cut my little slice of the Twitter firehose, perfectly catered to me. All the rest may be very interesting, but not for me. When traveling I use Tripadvisor, Yelp, Foursquare and Google Maps for discovering interesting places. But most of the times they’re not interesting, because they’re not catered to me. I want a catered map, made by me and the people I follow.
3. Space over time. I happen to go to the same place several times, and I find myself tweeting something from there every time. For instance, I tweet about movies at the cinema. Or about food at the restaurant. Or about love at my girlfriend’s. Wouldn’t it be nice if those tweets could automatically be stacked in a list, based on their location? A list of the movies I saw at the cinema, a list of the things I ate at my favorite restaurant, a list of love quotes for my girlfriend. That would be just like Tweets on a map, I’m not asking for more.
4. Breadcrumbs. A tweet is to me the easiest form of expression on the Internet. It’s easier than a review, it’s easier than a blogpost, and it’s often more valuable as well. When I travel, I leave tweets like Tom Thumb leaves breadcrumbs along the way. That’s the best journal of my trip, and I would like to share it. Like… tweets on a map! Can I haz?
5. Mentions. I’m kind of sick of the way Google Maps and Foursquare handle the distinction between public and private things. The first one only allows me to save home and work locations as private venues (what about that aunt’s lonely country house I reach once a year, always inevitably losing myself among the corn fields? Does anybody else need to know about that?). The second makes it quite complicated: private and public venues, private and public check-ins, things only visible to friends, pins and areas… What about Twitter’s policy? All tweets are public, but some are “directed” to @someone — just with a mention. So simple: I tweet a place for everybody, or I direct it to someone in particular. Imagine the same thing, but for places. Places are always about people. Some people are linked to a single place. Some others travel from country to country, leaving their marks on several different spots. Some places remind us of someone in particular. Mentions could be the magic elements that bring places back to the people. Is it that hard?
6. Newspaper maps. You know what’s the main difference between my Twitter timeline and a newspaper? Most of the times, the information contained in the latter is built, organised, updated and maintained by the service provider. The Twitter stream is conversely unfiltered and completely crowdsourced. We need newspapers. I read them, sometimes. But I always check my Twitter feed first. For some reason I love the various, unfiltered, and serendipitous heap of unrelated sentences I get there. Today, maps are mostly shaped as newspapers. The rest goes without saying: we need a crowdsourced map.
7. Continuous update. Don’t know if you got it already, but impermanency is the new hot word in the digital world. Snapchat is the dark horse which finally showed us the truth: we don’t need to, and we must not permanently memorize and store everything we do on the internet. And I’m not even talking about NSA. There’s just too much information to take the privilege of saving it all. Stable and fixed databases are the real enemies to the web. On the contrary, we need temporary but continuously updated data. Maps are no way different: places change more rapidly than we would think. They change more rapidly than any single map provider can record. Thinking of some sort of a Twitter map, anyone?
8. Hashtags. Places can be categorised. Foursqare’s hierarchy counts hundreds of different categories. And yet, that’s nothing compared to what hashtags can do. Of course, hashtags can represent categories: hundreds, thousands of them. But they can also mean events, feelings, causes, ideas. A map where millions of public and personal locations are described by just a limited bunch of categories is a very poorly designed map. A map organised by hashtags would be much more meaningful.
9. Simple. I love Twitter because it’s simple. I don’t like maps and everything that has to do with geolocation, because it’s awfully complicated. Here’s the reviews! There’s the ratings! Here’s the check-ins! Look at our great tips! Make a wish-list! Put a like to that photo! Invite a friend! Oh well… why can’t I just write something and that’s it? Maybe with a picture? Like a Tweet? In a place? That would be simple. That would be good.
10. A map which is not a map. Let’s face it: even maps by themselves are already too complicated. And boring. I don’t carry around compasses and rulers. Don’t ask me to read legends and measure distances. What if places were already organised in a list instead, and perfectly ordered by the distance from where I am now? Like a timeline, but based on space - a spaceline? Oh now that would be awesome, wouldn’t it?

Mapnaut. And here’s the most compelling reason of all: like you, we were just sick of waiting for Twitter to give us a map and so we made it ourselves. It’s called Mapnaut. It’s what we’ve been designing and building for a long time, and soon you’ll be able to use it. It does all of the above. It’s made for recording your experiences, and it’s catered to you. It’s organised by space and time. Places are public and can be directed to anyone. It’s a crowdsourced location database made entirely by people and continuously updated. It’s based on hashtags and mentions, and simply works with your Twitter account. But it’s still an empty canvas, and we need your help to draw on it.

Join the Twitter map. Be a Mapnaut. Get it on the App Store.

P.s.: We are not affiliated with Twitter. We just like it a lot. Oh and @ev, if you’re reading this, get in touch: info@mapnaut.com