14 DAY TRIAL // Mapping the world is an undertaking that even the largest web companies don’t treat lightly. It’s not exactly an issue of ‘can it be done,’ but rather ‘is it profitable?’ Unfortunately, for most of the world, the answer is no. Acquiring mapping data is expensive and time consuming, giving it away for free and making ends meet through advertising only works in a few of the developed countries.
Luckily, for everyone else, there’s the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project, which taps into the collective knowledge to provide remarkably accurate mapping data for much of the world. And the project is now welcoming its 250,000 registered user.
OSM is an open approach to online mapping. It relies on volunteer contributors, Wikipedia-style, to create the maps and add all the information. OSM has been around for about six years, but the past couple of years have been the most active. In fact, 2009 proved to be very good for the project as it grew from 100,000 registered users in March to 250,000 now.
All of the data added by contributors is being made available under a Creative Commons license, meaning that anyone can tap into it. And many have, there are countless projects, services and applications based on the data provided by OpenStreetMap. Considering there are very few alternatives, and not viable free ones, there’s no surprise.
What’s more, the data can prove surprisingly accurate and, in plenty of places, much more detailed than from other free sources like Google, Yahoo or Microsoft.
But OSM is not the only one crowd-sourcing map data. Google has been doing it, very successfully, with its Google Map Maker program, for example. Since it launched, Google Maps has added detailed data to hundreds of countries. Recently, Google has made available driving directions in 111 new countries, all thanks to volunteers using Map Maker.