Google maps product manager, Jess Lee, has posted about Google’s social mapping feature in My Maps. Tagzania also offers collaborative mapping. However, there are few differences in the two offerings.
To enable the collaborative feature of My Maps, you click the collaborative link and add email addresses of people who can add and modify the map. Google will send out invitations to the those email addresses with a link to the map. Once they open the map, they will be able to modify it.
Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/techbirmingham/503950484/
You create My Maps and invite your friends and coworkers to edit your maps. For example, you are planning a hiking trip and identified a few trails and then you invite your hiker buddies to edit and modify the map. Your hiker buddies can add more trails, make corrections to your existing trails by editing the map and changing texts in the pop-up bubbles.
You can also publish the map for the entire world and any one can change that map. I can see the possibility of spams here.
This wiki style collaborative map is very powerful for creating lots of interesting and useful geo-groups, e.g. good Thai eatery in New York, surfing spots through out the world, great beaches in Europe, Buddhist temples in Asia, etc., using the wisdom of the crowd. The possibilities are endless.
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