Information Madness

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Back in 2006 Google actually made its maps api available for India and Indian cities. Then we saw a revolutionary application called "WikiMapia" where everyone can locate and tag their known places. The application was really cool and innovative and that gave me an idea of creating something like wikimapia

but something specific to India. The idea I had was to provide an interface where people can mark their businesses on the map, enter phone numbers etc., then provide local business search to end user.

So after that thought, I started doing some research and found out about MapMyIndia.com which is still not close to what I had in mind. Because of the lack of time, I kept thinking about implementing it and almost six months after that, I found out about couple of new indian startups JustDial.com, OnYomo.com. (Read my article about Add your Business).

Discovery of those startups slowed down my aggresiveness and just couple months after that I discovered that Google India itself is providing an interface where people can locate their businesses, point of interest etc. on the map. Being such a huge company, Google in India has asked users to fill in data regarding cities. Google has provided GPS kits and all necessary equipments, and has a pilot running in 50 cities. So within few years, Google will have almost all india covered with more detailed maps. Also Google is feeding its maps from Google Earth (Desktop application).

So the point here is, will this startups like SadakMap or JustDial or OnYomo will survive this battle? The key to fight against big companies is uniqueness. And these sites in one way or other lacks this uniqueness.

Lets talk about SadakMap for a second, the basic functionality of this site is to locate a place, give it a title, details and mark it. Now what lacks here is the structured data. They could have broken down the form to have phone number, email address, website etc. But all they have is type, title and details. (Check the image below).

So now because of this non structured data it would be difficult for them to provide an interface where people can search by a particular information. Another thing I noticed is that, once you add the marker, you can not edit it. What if somebody finds out that they have misspelled something? You need to provide an edit functionality to users who created their own places. Other feature of this site is that you can write reviews about a place that you just marked or a place someone else has marked on the map. Well the feature is not unique here as you can find the similar functionality on Google India Maps as well. (Check out the article about Find local restaurants and businesses using Google India Maps

On the plus side, If SadakMap team manages to structure their data, they can sell their database to Yahoo or Microsoft or any other big company. As they grow (I wish them good luck for that), they will surely have huge database with latitude and longiture information.

So the question to my readers, what do you think about these Indian Startups survival?

Wherever on the map your business is located maybe it's time to take a break and go vacation Hawaii.  Or maybe Mexico beach vacations are more to your liking.  Take some time to relax!