MapQuest Launches Mobile Personalization

As part of a wave of new features, MapQuest late last year introduced My MapQuest, a personalization tool for the PC side of the business. It subsequently renamed that offering “My Places” and has now launched it in mobile. My Places for MapQuest4Mobile offers a rich user experience and the ability to save maps and […]

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As part of a wave of new features, MapQuest late last year introduced My MapQuest, a personalization tool for the PC side of the business. It subsequently renamed that offering “My Places” and has now launched it in mobile.

My Places for MapQuest4Mobile offers a rich user experience and the ability to save maps and directions. It also provides a bridge between the mobile-PC divide by offering consistency across platforms.

MapQuest4Mobile, the application, is currently available to BlackBerry devices (and free), although the company plans to roll it out rapidly to other platforms including Windows Mobile, the iPhone and Android (by Q2). Currently there’s an iPhone optimized mobile Safari experience for MapQuest.com but a dedicated iPhone app is coming.

The company also offers a subscription product with voice-guided, turn-by-turn GPS directions called MapQuest Navigator.

Christian Dwyer, Senior Vice President and General Manager, MapQuest previewed a roadmap for MapQuest mobile with me that emphasizes a uniform experience across mobile and the PC, as well as some interesting possible integrations with other AOL properties (e.g., AIM) and potentially other social media properties such as AOL’s Bebo.

Recently Google Maps passed MapQuest in monthly unique visitors for the first time. But MapQuest has been rolling out new products and services with much more regularity than in the past. In addition, on the PC side, today MapQuest Local introduced a concert tracker widget that uses default map location to show users who’s playing near them.

There’s some additional detail at LocalMobileSearch.


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About the author

Greg Sterling
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Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land, a member of the programming team for SMX events and the VP, Market Insights at Uberall.

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