Google Maps Goes Social

Another piece from Google's social project has been released: Google Maps becomes social with the addition of user profiles. Until now, users could create personalized maps and write reviews for local businesses, but they didn't have an identity. Google Maps uses the same profiles from Shared Stuff and the same user IDs, so these profiles will probably added to all Google services to provide the integration.

Google Maps and Google Earth build a solid geographic platform that can be used to define your world and see how it intersect with other people's worlds. You can broadcast your presence with tools like Jaiku, annotate the places you visit, expand your world with places suggested by people that have similar interests, understand the life from other countries and find what's hot in your neighborhood. Google Earth could have a new layer that's more interesting than videos, sounds or pictures: people.