Google has begun leveraging one of their best services, Maps, giving you the option to follow a place in order to receive notifications from a place, as well as keep up to date with new places coming soon near you.
The Follow button will appear on the Maps entry for your favourite restaurant, cafe or store, and when you follow a place you’ll then receive notifications including ‘events, offers and other updates’ in the ‘For you’ tab.
As well Google is getting you psyched for new places opening soon, with profiles for new places opening soon appearing and offering you an opening date in orange on their Maps entry. You’ll see all the info about the upcoming place that you’d expect to see like Address and a link to their website if they have one associated.
The update is listed as being ‘where available’, so it’s not clear if this is available outside the US or not but we’re not seeing a Follow button on places near us as yet. If it’s not here yet, it shouldn’t be long with Google advising that the features will be coming to more countries soon.
Maps is so great. I’ve been using it more and more over the past year, becoming a local guide, and saving new restaurants to my “want to go” list, reviewing my timeline to settle arguments (and to check just how late I’ve been out on particularly hazy nights haha).
This seems like a great new option but I hope Maps doesn’t become another advertisement area for companies to leverage, like how Instagram is basically becoming a shopping website.
I’m guessing that advertising is the very point, Adam. I don’t mind a little advertising for a great, useful service but if the annoy factor outweighs the usefulness that is when they loose users.