When Google Maps launched in 2005, it awed a lot of people because of the drag and drop capability that was then unheard off in the mainstream mapping services. The marriage of that UI wizardry and a satellite view, along with other excellent features, proved to be an excellent pair to wow the early adopters of the service. It was the best thing that ever happened to maps and though it was too early to say then (and is still to early to say now), Google maps was put in a very good position to compete with the more established (but then aging) MapQuest and Yahoo Maps.

However, the wow factor eventually died down and Google Maps’ competitors, with an already huge user base, eventually caught up with what Google maps was offering. Google has then struggled to fully differentiate their maps offering from the competitors. Never the less, Google added improvements to the service, albeit in a much slower pace than its competitors’. Until recently, Google has not really offered some features that are both novel and useful that has the potential to really be used extensively by its users: Google Maps Street View and My Maps. For this post I will discuss My Maps.

It’s a well known fact that Google maps is the most mashed up online map application. There are many very useful Google maps mash-up that sprouted like mushrooms after Google Maps has debuted and even more when Google opened up its Maps API. Housingmaps is one example of this, mashing up Google Maps with Craigslist.

With the introduction of My Maps, Google is bringing the idea of mash-ups to a wider audience of ordinary users, and putting it in a concept that is more user-friendly.

Google is applying the paradigm of personalization to Maps, much like what it has done to its Personalized home page, or more recently known as iGoogle.

My Maps is composed has two components: First is the capability to create your own personalized, annotated maps and share them with other Google Maps users,

and second is the feature that lets you add maps and tools created by other users, developers or Google.

Next post I will continue with a comprehensive tutorial on making the most out of the My Maps feature.