One of the most anticipated and most hollow panels at GeoWeb conferences of late is “Something Something Business Model”. I think the reality was best captured by the Fake Steve Coast:

The default business model of Web 2.0 has been advertising. The problem is you are largely limited to placing advertisements around maps and you can’t leverage the local or geographic content on the map to target with. So, you have to generate a massive amount of traffic to make enough money with your ads around maps. Which is difficult, since most of the clicking is on the map and you don’t get loads of page views to push ads against.

The dirty secret - it is even tough for the big guys (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) to generate big revenue with their mapping applications. The mapping applications are largely loss leaders. The scary bit is they are loss leaders and GYM control the ad inventory. Meaning they actually have a network of advertisers willing to pay to have their content shown in conjunction with their maps. This is no small feat and I would love to hear how folks like Lat 49 are fairing in their endeavors to build an ad network for maps.

Even if we do finally get advertisements on maps and a version of Adsense to go with it - are you likely or unlikely to be able to pay the bills with it? Not to say it is impossible.

Platial has stated in the past it is generating revenue (possibly even cash flow positive) and has the level of traffic (15MM unique users per month) to support an ad based business. Although where does it go (acquisition, IPO, Kleiner et al want their money back eventually)? How many other GeoWeb companies out there are able to support themselves on advertising?

What are the other alternatives? Maybe we can start with how folks pay for geo applications and content today:

GIS - I pay for licensed desktop software (sometimes a client server deployment)
Google Earth - I pay for the pro version that has extra functionality
API’s - I pay for geo type API’s when they are not used on the public web
Integrators - I’ll pay you to build a geo type mash up (sometime you have your own product to make this easier)
Data - I pay you for proprietary data that I can use in my geo application
Subscription - I pay to use your service on a recurring basis
Market places - I pay for third party content through your website and you get a cut
Buying devices - I pay for a GPS or other mapping enabled piece of hardware.

I’d argue that the majority of GeoWeb companies that are making money are doing so with one of the business models listed above. Further, I’d argue that of those most of them are doing so as integrators. Paying for licensed GIS software is the most real of the models generating over a billion in revenue, but it is not really GeoWeb outside of people paying to license Google Earth.

Selling geospatial data is another real business generating around $660 million. The companies selling this data are rarely GeoWeb companies unless you count NAVTEQ and TeleAtlas. In the data old guard the business model to sell their geospatial data is often a hot topic.

Selling API’s is a very GeoWeb method of doing business, but with the abundance of available free API’s how many people are actually paying for them? While subscription services have been big winners in other Web 2.0 spaces (Basecamp, Salesforce etc.) I can’t think of a successful geospatial subscription service (help me there must be one…).

For market places, WeoGeo has been successful in getting content providers to make their data available for sale through their service. It will be interesting to see how it scales and if a market develops, but it is one of the few GeoWeb areas where there has been business model innovation.

Interestingly, there are a myriad of business model options but nothing I’ve seen to date really pops out as a clear cut winner. Whether you are a start up or one of the big incumbents figuring out how to monetize the GeoWeb, it is going to continue to be a bur in the saddle (aka pain in the ass)…

Popularity: 16% [?]

Photos of an “invisible” tribe in Brazil are so ubiquitous that their images now fill a Google Image search for ‘uncontacted’ . The story of these “lost tribes” discovery is as interesting as the images themselves, including the discovery of their location with Google Earth.

On Finder! you can find highly detailed census information about the Brazilian populations surrounding the “lost tribes”. The Brazilian demographic data shows, for example, the population surrounding the “lost tribes” has grown faster than anywhere else in the state:

Finder! also has numerous demographic and housing data from 2000 covering all of Brazil as well as cell phone ownership and employment data from 2005, and roadways throughout South America.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Data Transfer Solutions (DTS) developed an application for the Texas Forest service called the Texas Wildfire Data Browser. The application provides viewing for wildfire threats, fuel hazards and fire locations.

In light of the Iowa flooding, MSNBC posted an interactive map allowing users to track flooding locations in the Midwest. The majority of the points on the map give the levels of historical rivers and the others even link to specified news areas.

Google Earth’s text gets a make-over with a new option to view KML texts on the map. Designed by Sergey Devytakov, the new tool, called Labels, allows the specification of font changes, shadows and outlines and choice of icon, etc.

Maps and texts combine through Kvisu.com. This unique search engine takes text based results and aligns them with a surface map using visualized keywords.

Zimbabwe gets on the map. Google Maps has been used to track the political campaign of Morgan Tsvangirai and the unfortunate terror occurring in the country.

Popularity: 15% [?]

On June 3^rd Apache Corporation reported that a pipeline ruptured and caught fire at its Varanus Island gas processing and transportation hub. The plant is located off the coast of Western Australia, and is responsible for one third of the state’s gas supply. Thankfully no one was injured and the 153 people on the island were evacuated safely. On the other hand this event is having a significant impact on the economy, and has left officials scrambling to alleviate the situation.

Many of Western Australia’s businesses have been left shorthanded in the energy department as a result, and are prioritizing their energy use, even cutting operations as a whole. Western Australia is responsible for producing a third of the nation’s exports, which brings this into the international economy. Let’s just put another one in the books for the energy crisis.

With so much emphasis being placed on energy, I decided to take a look at what kind of energy datasets can be found on Finder! Everything from Power Plant Emissions in India to Central Iraq Pipelines can already be found in Finder!

Here are some links to some of the Australian/Energy specific datasets available on Finder!

Operating Renewable Energy Plants

Accredited Renewable Energy Sites

Operating Fossil Fuel Plants

As we deal with the current energy situation worldwide, I just wanted to acknowledge the wealth of spatial data that pertains to the different aspects regarding Energy overall.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Andrew Turner had a great post a few days ago asking the question “is Google Maps GIS?” Lots of insightful discussion ensued with questions around what is the definition of GIS and has the term itself outlived its usefulness.

In response to Andrew’s post, many folks argued that GoogleMaps/Earth is a GIS. Folks on the GIS side feel strongly it is not. Mike Hickey the President of MapInfo stated , “”the explosion of Neogeography is driving awareness [and] collaborative data consolidation [but it] isn’t GIS.”

The truth is likely somewhere between the two, but I think the more important point is that the gap between the two is shrinking at an incredibly rapid pace. I’d predict in the next few years there will be little that differentiates the GeoWeb from GIS other than the names identified with their past like ESRI, Google, Microsoft, MapInfo etc.

In many ways the landscape for GIS today is not much different than it was for statistics several years back. When I learned statistics we had to crank through command line programs like Stata, R and SAS. Today you can do the majority of the basic statistic functions in Excel or other spreadsheet applications. If you want to do hardcore stats you can still go back to the professional packages, but for the vast majority of people it is overkill and scares away users unnecessarily.

We are seeing much the same progression with GIS and the GeoWeb. More and more of the functionality that was traditionally associated with GIS will be ported over the GeoWeb in an easier to use framework that leverages the power of an interconnected Web. That is where the statistics analogy breaks down - it was based on an easy to use desktop app versus a hard to use desktop app. In the GIS/GeoWeb landscape there is the additional variable of being connected to the Web through the Internet.

This, I think, is where the GeoWeb will have its greatest advantage. It is built from the ground up to leverage the power of the Web. Versus GIS which is unfortunately saddled with trying to make the Web work their legacy desktop applications and client server systems. Web efficiencies I believe will push GIS into “the cloud” (as much as we make fun of the term - “puffy little Internet clouds”). The question is who is going to make it happen?

1) start ups like WeoGeo, CloudMade, Mapufacture or
2) Google
3) Microsoft or
4) ESRI?

While I think the start ups will drive innovation I think at the end of the day it will be Google who makes it happen.

Why would Google want to do such a thing? It is an advertising company after all. Their mission is to organize the worlds information. Quoting Mike Jones from a talk in India, “most geospatial data today is locked away in workstations managed by proprietary software.” Jones’ vision is to have “all” geospatial information available to the world and indexed in a way that it can be accessed by those who need it (hence the Google geoindex - not well received by GIS users).” If the things standing between you and the data is “proprietary software” why not offer the software in the cloud and the data will reside there as well. That would seem the shortest path making the public data in that equation accessible.

In conclusion I believe this means we are in for a lot more convergence and there will be no debate in regards to the question “is Google Maps GIS?”

Popularity: 16% [?]