The Google Lat Long Blog announced that My Maps now can be built by groups of people, not just individuals. Maps can be edited by only selected friends and family or by Google Maps users at large. The benefits of this are fairly straightforward: group travel planning, collective favorites, better overall data (wisdom of crowds), and so on. There’s also a potential scrapbooking dimension of this too (pictures and video from our trip, etc.).

Below is a screenshot of the window that opens when you click a “collaborate” link in the upper left in My Maps:

This is the next installment in the opening up of Google Maps features to editing by the community.

Related Topics: Google: Maps & Local

About The Author: Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog Screenwerk, about SoLoMo issues and connecting the dots between online and offline. He also posts at Internet2Go, which is focused on the mobile Internet. Follow him @gsterling. See more articles by Greg Sterling