This post aims to showcase the best 360 spheres contributed on Maps by Connect Local Guides and when it comes to the “best”, we mean those having the most views. For convenience, we call these star 360 spheres.
Join in, Share and Learn
If you have contributed 360 spheres on Maps, then you can join in and share and learn. It’s simple to do. Just hit this link and register or add a comment in this post and someone will jump in to help you.
By sharing our contributions and achievements we can learn a lot about how to improve and achieve even better outcomes in terms of the impact that our Maps contributions have on our communities. We have been doing this successfully with photos for the past few years and more recently we started doing this with video. Now we can do the same with 360 Spheres. Together we can!
If you’re new here then you may not be aware that this post forms part of a series of leaderboard posts each covering different aspects of the contributions of Local Guides. To see an index to these leaderboard posts and all posts associated with them, simply hit this link.
Readme - How to Read the Star 360 Spheres leaderboards (April 2024)
Briefly, this is what you need to know about the leaderboards in this post. For more details see the Leaderboard documentation and the Leaderboard System’s online context-sensitive help information.
The leaderboards in this post present details about the star 360 spheres of participating Local Guides from all over the world. If you have contributed 360 spheres on Maps then you will also have a star, it’s your 360 sphere that has the most views.
As well as an overall leaderboard, in time you will see leaderboards for different Local Guide levels which provide you with direct comparisons of your star 360 spheres’ performance with those of your peers. Finally, there’s a leaderboard ranking the top 100 star spheres by average star views per day which gives an indication on how good your star 360 sphere is. To be included in this leaderboard, you must have updated your star spheres’ views in the period since the date of the last average star 360 spheres per day leaderboard as posted here on Connect last month.
The average star views per day is calculated by dividing the star views by the life of the star 360 sphere expressed in days. The life of the star 360 sphere is equal to the number of days between when you first uploaded your star 360 sphere on Maps and the date that you last updated its star views and thus, will be different for each participating Local Guide. Therefore, for accuracy of the information it is important that you enter the correct dates. When it comes to the date that you last updated the star views, point #2 above is very important.
As well as the star views and the date uploaded onto Maps, each listing on the leaderboards shows the Maps Category, and a description (e.g. Storefront, Building or Park) of the respective Local Guide’s star 360s.
If the Maps Category of a star 360 sphere is shown as a link and if the name of the relevant Place of Interest was provided by the respective Local Guide, then hovering over that link will show you the name of the place and selecting that link will take you to a screenshot with details of that place as posted on the Local Guides, 2024 Star 360 sphere post, a “photo album” if you will, of star 360 spheres.
If the Maps Category of a star 360s is shown on a colored background then that star has been selected as one of the best that meets the formatting requirements as specified in the Local Guides, 2024 Star 360 Spheres album post. Select that star’s category and see why it has been rated as one of the best and read more about that star on the “360s album” post.
Preceding some of the leaderboards, you may see a number of featured star 360s. If so, these are a selection from those that best meet the requirements as detailed in the Star 360s album post.
Where shown, around leaderboard sequence numbers indicate that this is the first time that the Local Guide has participated on the Top 100 Local Guides leaderboards.
Where shown, ( ) around leaderboard sequence numbers indicate that this Local Guide levelled up/down onto this leaderboard.
An asterisk (*) shown after a Connect Username indicates that that Local Guide is a Connect Moderator.
Double asterisks (**) shown after a Connect Username indicates that that Local Guide is a Googler.
Hovering over a Local Guide’s username will display the integration number that integrates that Local Guide’s details on the Leaderboards System and Connect; the umbilical chord if you will between the two disparate systems.
Selecting a Connect Username will take you to that Local Guide’s Connect Profile.
A superscript following a Local Guide’s username and the star views value shown on a background color indicates that some of that Local Guide’s data has been set to private. The Leaderboards System uses 8 different superscripts to indicate the varying states of a Local Guide’s profile however only 3 superscripts will likely ever be shown on the Leaderboards. In all the remaining 5 cases the Local Guides have been deleted from participation. On the Star Photo Views Leaderboards you will only ever see the following superscripts used:
[1] indicates that the number of photos and photo views values are private.
[3] indicates that both the number of photos and photo views values and the number of reviews and ratings values are private.
A ? or the words “Not set” in a cell indicates that the respective value cannot be determined or hasn’t been provided by or for the respective Local Guide.
The data for the leaderboards in this post was read at 6:30 PM on May 2, 2024 (UTC).
Local Guides included on the leaderboards must check their entries for any errors. If you should find any errors or omissions, please add the details in a comment on this post. Regarding omissions, please note point 15 above.
The April featured star 360 sphere by @Kumaarsantosh , a Level 10 Local Guide from Noida, India. It’s taken at th SkyJumper Trampoline Park inside the Spectrum Metro City Mall, Noida, India. In his April update done on May 1, 2024, see here, Santosh explicitly mentions that his 360 sphere views count for April was identical to that in March and that the view count has been updated. This got me thinking so please do read my comment at the end o the 360 spheres leaderboards.
Welcome @snieckarz to the 360 Sphere Leaderboards and it’s great to see you participating in all Leaderboard media streams.
When describing the @Kumaarsantosh 's featured star 360 Spherehere, I cited that in his April update done on May 1, 2024, Santosh explicitly mentions that his 360 sphere views count for April was identical to that in March and that the view count has been updated. Well on close examination, you can see that excluding @snieckarz who is new to the Leaderbards, other than @efcxpstar 360s views increased from 10,997 to 11,107, all participants had the same outcome. Note also that as a consequence of this, the Average Views/Day is down as well. While I know at least one Local Guide just didn’t update their April star 360s views, it would appear that the Google views issue has impacted many and I think that @indahnuria may be interested in this comment.
I could check, but did you update your April star 360s views or are you like Santosh, caught up with the persistent Maps media views issue?
Perhaps after all April Leaderboards are posted, I could quickly do a similar check for both Photos and Videos.
Thanks @AdamGT for highlighting here about there is no change in the view count for individual photo in last one month (here the star 360 Sphere is taken into consideration).
Even for other individual photos there is very less movement in view count whereas the Overall View Count Graph is growing**.** Similar slow movement in terms of view count can be observed in Star Photo as well but atleast some changes are visible.
Thanks @Kumaarsantosh and regarding your comment “Even for other individual photos there is very less movement in view count whereas the Overall View Count Graph is growing,” I believe others including I think @tony_b have mentioned this as well.
BTW I think you’re going to love a new Leaderboard System feature that I’m planning on releasing in July
This is such an interesting board due to the exclusivity of it. Both @AdamGT and I have lamented the fact that we could not get our 360s approved on the Map. From a user standpoint, this is such an incredible feature. I only with it was highlighted more within Maps.
Hey, @MarcoDavoli - I’m surprised to see that you’re missing from this Leaderboard!
It’s in beta testing now @Kumaarsantosh and I’m quietly confident that it will be ready for general use before end July. I do have a number of things on my catch up to-do-list but still I hope to run a meetup in July so watch out for the announcement on this.
