TL;DR: information
I share a lot on Google Maps, more than I do on any other application. I share photographs, but not because I like photography, I share food reviews, but not because I love eating out — I mean, I do, but that’s not my primary purpose. What I love sharing the most on Google Maps is information about the places I go to.
I live in a city that is mostly undocumented. Let’s see an example.
This is Hall Road, as it appears on Google Maps. From Maps, it would appear as though this were just another roadway with a single shop in the middle. But it isn’t. It’s the single most famous electronics marketplace in my city, Lahore. Lahore itself is the provincial capital of Pakistan’s largest province, and one of the countries largest three cities. Hall Road is a big deal. Here’s a video I made of me and my cousin after we got lost around Hall Road a few weeks ago, excuse the shoddy camera-work, I didn’t expect to be posting it here.
There are literally dozens of shops crammed in small 5ftx5ft cubes in just this clip. This road is full of hundreds of shops, and the small alleyways full of thousands, and they’re all incredibly specialized. Imagine if you needed a speaker driver. Where would you go? How about this guy, whose shop isn’t on Google Maps:
Yes. That’s a picture of a small business owner whose shop is full of speaker drivers, and nothing else.
I think Maps is a great way for us to organize information, and I’m but a small contributor to this ecosystem, but there’s so much information for me to catalogue, and I get points every time I do it. I love it.