The End of Platial
Platial Moving Forward
OK, so the news is grim. Platial is now essentially finished, at least how we knew it before. They’ve turned off their service and now everything is essentially a download link. This means if you’ve been using Platial (or at least used them in a previous life) and want to get your data, you need to act now. Platial has “donated” your data to Geocommons where it now resides under a creative commons license. If you want to keep track of Platial user “poopypants” contributions, thankfully Geocommons has archived it.
Ay, ay, ay, no me gusta KML
Widgets
I found it interesting that Di-Ann followed up with this:
If you’re looking for a new map widget, Google MyMaps offers one. It is not two-way, meaning your users cannot YET contribute but it is a very easy way to map and share maps.
The Google is supreme in this space. And users have embraced Google’s My Maps over other competing services. Google has innovated so quickly in this space and that you can perform simple spatial queries shows that their speed of innovation is going to take out a ton more start ups. Why share your data with someone’s free data portal when you can do the same with Google’s My Maps, visualize with their APIs and oh by the way, indexed by Google’s spiders.
In the Noise
I went back and searched though my blog to see if I ever posted on Platial before. I found it interesting in that I never mentioned them before. It wasn’t because I didn’t know who they were or because I had never seen them. I guess they just didn’t go far enough down the “professional GIS” hold that I’ve got myself into. I wonder if that was the same for many others. Platial covered quite a scope and in the end maybe their efforts were spread too thin, money dried up and well Google sat on them.
Selling ads on top of spatial data does not make a workable business model. I think that either you are too niche and can’t get enough eyeballs or you are too far down the food chain and the real revenue is going to Google, Apple and Microsoft. The pyramid scheme ensures that the last person gets nothing and those developing these websites are funneling so much back up the food chain that they can’t survive.
The Good News
So… depressing isn’t it? Nah, it is just how the world works. Those who started early sometimes never make it to the finish line. Consider yourself lucky that you don’t have millions to lend to these companies. 
On a serious note though, what Platial was trying to do, share your data with widget, is a live and well. You see thousands of Google My Maps on so many websites without even thinking about it anymore. Heck, when Platial started, did you think it would be possible embedding an ESRI map on your blog?
James:
It’s interesting that the web mapping revolution, to my limited knowledge, hasn’t given rise to business models that have their founders wallowing in easy cash.
Or at least no one told me!
Talking to geo consulting shops both large and small, things seem somewhere between “rough” and “busy”–but the kind of busy where they may not be eager to hire because who knows what the pipeline will look like 12 months out.
In my darker moments, I wonder why I didn’t just focus on shoot ‘em up games on the iPhone.
BT
Right. Cherchez la revenue. I could tell you about a couple of geo wunderkind startups that have barely made a penny and are still wallowing in the VC. We should have a sweepstakes like f*ckedcompany did.
I’d say the founders of Google are indeed wallowing in cash. They make it seem easy, too.
Maps makes Google search better, just like your click-through percentages off a text site help refine their core engine. When they use maps to help you focus your search on a particular continent, country, state, county, city, or block, that’s a filter that cuts the overhead on their engine. the closer you look, the more focused the search. The more focused the search, the faster the result. With faster results, they can take part of the turnaround budget to pair ‘your’ results with advertiser content.
As for the rest of the web-mapping community, how do you compete with less-than-free from Google? Not by trying to sell maps as the benefit and the end result, that’s how.
Well, we/they can still make our maps/apps better.
For example: the Google Maps app on my Blackberry has no scale bar. When I’m somewhere unfamiliar, the map doesn’t give me any visual clue how far it is from A to B. Quite frustrating when you’re on foot.
I like what Bing is giving me in terms of map usability, but then their search seems to stink.
You don’t compete with Google, that’s how you compete.
Google is in the business of selling advertising. Any map that has no purpose in advertising, has no purpose to them. They do not use maps to focus your search. They use maps to focus their ads. That makes it faster to get an ad to you that you will respond to. You put the advertising too far down in the process.
And that’s why the geographic community is not competing with Google.
This is yet more writing on the wall for us GIS Professionals: the map is not our territory.
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