For the first time knew Mapbox was at last Mobile-loco Congress

The first time I knew Mapbox was at last year's Mobile-loco conference, CEO Eric Gundersen showed me how to customize a cloud based digital map with Mapbox, what impressed me most was not "customization", but its design, Including the site's own UI and the user's editing tools, preset schemes, etc., simple, easy to use, beautiful. Intuition tells me it's a good product and I'm anxious to know more about the story behind Mapbox. With Mapbox's headquarters in Washington, D.C., it took some time to meet again, and finally met Eric in San Francisco a few days ago, the first day of the Mapbox San Francisco Division (in code for America).

Chat about the product, talked about the industry, talk about the ideal, and then talk back to reality:

"Now mapbox at what stage of the start-up company (financing)?"

"We've never taken money from investors, and we haven't done any financing," he said. We have developed well in the past year. Eric answered me with a slight pride.

I was amazed and jokingly continued to ask him, "How did you survive these 3 years?"

Eric laughed and said, "I know, maybe we're lucky." ”

The word "lucky" has been repeated by Eric several times, but has not taken 3 years of investors a penny, all rely on "self-sufficiency" to feed 30th employees, Mapbox must have extraordinary place.

Customizing a map-related to design, branding

"We want to have a more beautiful map!" This is the simplest intention of Eric to start Mapbox with several colleagues. It can be seen that the term "design" is the best synonym for the mapbox gene.

Customize a street map, or a terrain map, even satellite maps, there are 24 colors, 8 styles (color matching, details set) of the preset design options for users, users can also adjust their own streets, buildings, areas, water, land and other color collocation, in a place to choose the size, color and icon ( For example, the restaurant's "knife and fork", Stop Point "P" and so on) dripping pointer, and add caption and content description for tag; Add map function, including scrolling zoom control, cue box, legend, Share button, place name search, bandwidth monitor, etc. users can also use Tilemill (Mapbox predecessor, Graphic design open source software, like Photoshop, to design and add new layers (support to design fonts, colors, gratings, patterns, scalable vector graphics, etc. on new layers, add hints, chart graphics, etc.).

This is the map that I have done in about 3 minutes to mark the location of the Silicon Valley activity in Pingwest this month, and to find the location on the initial map-Choose a color scheme-place a dripping pointer-add the activity title and content, and the next step is to publish the map. Whether it's a private social or commercial use, users get a URL that can be posted on Twitter or Facebook, or get a section of HTML

Paste into the site code; For developers, you can use the JavaScript API provided by Mapbox or the iOS SDK to embed a well-designed map into your application.

This personalized map customization service is a great attraction for business users because it is about branding, which is "design really matters" in the words of Eric.

Above is Foursquare and two other European customers use the Mapbox example, they will map color and style design with their own brand characteristics, which ensure the entire product from functional services to marketing consistency, consumer-oriented brand image and recognition has also been improved. Mapbox can also provide customers with data analysis reports, such as a statistical Foursquare user check-in density of a beautiful map, so that the map for the brand service.

At present Mapbox includes Foursquare,evernote,hipmunk, the United Nations, USA today (2012 presidential election using real-time regional map polling statistics on the use of Mapbox services), Bass Pro shops (outdoor supplies), Weather services and educational services such as more than 900 large and small business-paid users (this is in the case of Mapbox without sales staff), "just as the communicator charges the number of minutes per call, Mapbox's basic approach is to charge for map usage and clicks, and to offer 3 monthly service packages.

"There's more than just Google Maps to do maps"--with speed and personality to the edge of the opponent

Eric said last year that Apple Maps (some of the data came from OpenStreetMap and the Dutch GPS company TomTom), Amazon announced it will release its own map platform (Nokia data, Nokia data from the acquisition of the company Navteq, And Navteq's data in fact and many other map companies from the United States, such as Tiger from the event, in fact, let people understand one thing, it turns out that the world more than Google Maps a map, and the things there are differences. Eric believes that something like this is great for mapbox and the entire map industry, and it changes the rules of the game. Eric is excited to compete with giants like Google.

Foursquare started using Mapbox's maps early last year, and Mapbox realized the sharing of maps directly into Twitter earlier this year. Eric said Mapbox was the first and only one to do it, and he tested several other similar products, including Google, Apple, Bing, Nokia, Apple, Mapquest, Cloudmade, TomTom, ESRI, and so on, do not do in the user's Twitts directly display the map, can only use a short URL to transfer the reader to another page.

Earlier this year, Mapbox announced the acquisition of a location-sharing application Meattext, which not only allowed Mapbox to compete with the location of imessage, but also the beginning of more excellent applications for Mapbox open source core code access.

And for the rise of the indoor map, Eric is extremely excited, he said Mapbox will never miss this wonderful opportunity.

Where is the most important map data?—— free Open source "map Wikipedia" OpenStreetMap

For startups like Mapbox, it's almost impossible to buy data or run around the world like Google. OpenStreetMap (OSM) is the best source of data.

OSM is like Wikipedia in a digital map, with data from grassroots, map enthusiasts from all corners of the world, and driven by Governments and related organizations, so it can cover most of the world's major regions, and even developing countries that are not covered by similar products. According to current statistics, there are already 170 million road data on the OSM, and nearly 150,000 roads were added yesterday, with OSM existing registered members of 1.04 million, and the number of users who contributed at least once to 216,000. OSM data is rapidly becoming richer and more accurate every day.

Mapbox is also an important contributor to OSM communities and ecosystems while using OSM data. Last September, Eric on behalf of Mapbox received the Knight Foundation non-profit fund for the data Challege project to give the 575,000 Dollar Award, Mapbox the money to continue to improve the quality of OSM data. OSM's own map editing tools were very complex and difficult to use, which in some way hindered the editors ' participation and the accuracy of the data. Mapbox specifically developed a map-editing tool called ID, which provides a friendly design interface, makes it easy to draw roads, identify buildings, modify or delete existing data to improve accuracy, and allows editors to contact their predecessors to discuss the changes they want to make.

Eric says Mapbox wants everyone in any language in the world to be able to easily add and edit map data, regardless of computer level. Using Mapbox Map Services as a commercial customer with a large user base like Foursquare is also a good way to improve the quality of OSM data. In fact, this for users, Mapbox, OSM three parties are a positive virtuous circle.

When I first met Eric, he wore a NASA T-shirt, which made me think Mapbox was a NASA product ... He said he was a big fan of NASA and was very thankful for everything NASA has done for the public, including the opening of some map data, "The future of map data is open".

Eric was an economist once again, and when I asked Mapbox whether there would be any future expansion of financing, he was still very emboldened to say, "the next 18 months we will see how fast the company needs to grow, we still want to do the original ecological growth." ”