Grapheety.com - use a map to allow people to tell stories about locations

Posted on April 25, 2007
Filed Under web 2.0 news |

clipboardwe.jpgHave you ever planned to visit a new location but were left feeling a little unsure about your future destination? Have you used sites like TripAdvisor.com or Hotels.com to read reviews on hotels, but you still weren’t satisfied with your information? Well, a new web site aims to change the ways people research a destination. Grapheety.com uses a map to allow people to tell stories about locations. Every story takes place at some location, so why not let people know where that is? Now you can look at the area around your hotel, the neighborhood, see true stories from real people about where you’re about to go.

Grapheety.com is taking advantage of a new wave of sites that feature a map service provided by Google. Unlike other sites however, which attach a picture to a map, Grapheety.com takes the opposite approach and features the stories people tell. It is only through a socially run site like this, that someone can truly feel an area. Of course you can add pictures, comments, ratings, and the like, but Grapheety.com features the story first.

One fun promotion they have once per quarter is a Treasure Hunt. They put clues around the earth and the first person to find all of the clues wins the Treasure. They have given away 3 iPods already!

Some of the challenges the site will face are a new entrant into the mapping space, Google My Maps. The service is very different from Grapheety.com, but people may not instantly recognize this. Also, Google carries so much weight that it tends to monopolize a new area very quickly. The founder of Grapheety.com, Gavin P. Quinn, seems to think that Google My Maps will only effect the commodity mapping services, such as platial.com, or flagr.com, and not creative ones that really offer a unique service.

Another challenge is the creation of content. For a service like this to truly be successful there must be a critical mass of posts. It is getting closer, but Grapheety.com does not want to sacrifice the quality of its content just to bring in a mass of information.

The site is very flashy, and has an overall pleasant experience. I found myself caught up for a few hours just surfing around the globe to places I want to go. There are some incredible posts by people obviously more well travelled than me.

I have heard that the company was founded in Minneapolis, MN. The founder, Gavin Quinn, had the idea for the web site when trying to plan his honeymoon to the south of France.

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Comments

3 Responses to “Grapheety.com - use a map to allow people to tell stories about locations”

  1. James on April 25th, 2007 7:01 pm

    TripAdvisor.com seems to be more popular, but I’ll try Grapheety anyway… I am not sure whether or not it’s a free service…

  2. Roger on April 25th, 2007 11:22 pm

    TripAdvisor.com is a bit different… more complicated… I use both of them… what about you?

  3. Gavin on May 1st, 2007 4:15 pm

    TripAdvisor is a great site. But it lacks the context of the area. You can review a hotel, but what if the hotel is not near the location you’re trying to find. Or what if you want to see a location that is not a hotel or restaurant. That is where Grapheety.com comes in.

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