Techcrunch announces a major update to Plazes, a location based web service. Plazes is probably one of the most famous European Web startups (it is based in Berlin). It has been funded by Martin Varsavsky and others and it’s been available for over one year.

The service allows you to publish and share you current position on a map. The software you have to download guesses your position (by geolocating your IP address and, probably, tracerouting your connection to their servers - to disambiguate private IPs) and remembers it. Every time you connect from the same place it will update your position on the map. You can also tag places using some predefined facets (home/business, wifi, …). Users can search the map by using tags previously saved. There is also a useful mobile interface that lets you query their database via SMS messages.
I’ve been using the software they provide (the OSX version) to update my position and keep trace of some friends. Unfortunately there aren’t many members in Italy, so I didn’t fully enjoy the social aspect of their service. I noticed also a serious drawback, as sometimes the software fails to detect the Wifi connection and doesn’t update my position on the map, as if I was offline.
As I wrote before Techcrunch announced the availability of a new major release, allowing you to update your position directly on a web interface (by using a GMaps mash-up). This should enable more users to adopt the technology, as it doesn’t require the installation of a new program. The new service will be available to all users during the next days.
Users will also be able to attach a small tag message to their position, bringing some Twitter-like flavour to the service.

I don’t think the new web based interface will make Plazes a lot better, the downloaded software is far more useful to update your position, as you just have to install and forget it, the updates to your status and position will be fully automated (if you have previously been at the same location).

The integration with Twitter does make a lot more sense, if they don’t try to create a brand new Twitter-like service, but instead rely on the existing service, integrating it on their interface. Twitter provides an API and a feed for each user, it shouldn’t be too difficult to integrate data like many other twitter mashups.

I do believe it would be also useful to integrate the service with existing IM services (MSN, AIM, GTalk), in order to offer a localization layer in addition to the usual features of an IM system. A plugin for Adium (or another general purpose IM client for other OSes) supporting Plazes among the other protocols would be great and could spin the adoption of this technology.

Additionally I hope new social features will be introduced, in order to leverage the social network created by users located on the map. This is a valuable resource that could lead to a lot more features.

Another silo won’t have the success Plazes deserves.

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