What it does

Glotter allows you to use Google maps to create maps displaying various types of data that you can share with the online community. Maps are categorized into travel and places (the Louvre), knowledge (NASA headquarters and centers), leisure and sports (the Beijing Olympic Games 2008), and entertainment and fun (the spot of five people waiting for the Applie iPhone 3G to come out in New York City who are trying to make a Guinness World Record for “the longest time waiting in line to buy something”). There is also a tab full of useful services to help you arrange and set up your map. These include a site to get driving directions, Google Earth, Geocoder, the street viewer for 360 degree street level photos, images of what’s in space, and more. You can also add extras such as a YouTube video or a Flickr photo stream to buff up your map. If you just want to make a personal map for you and your friends to use, that is also a possibility. So if you want to create a content rich map, or just want to browse through the most popular ones that have been posted by the community, check out Glotter.

In their own words

"What is GLOTTER after year 1?

Easy Web-Mapping! Creating new entries is intuitive and as easy as pie.

Compatibly! As we use KML for overlaying the placemarks all GLOTTER World maps can be viewed in a wide range of third party websites or tools.

Convenience! All maps can be embedded in other websites.

Fun! It's just fun exploring new maps on GLOTTER.

Service! The useful Services enjoy great popularity."

Why it might be a killer

It’s fun to check out the various maps available on the site, and being able to browse through based on category is useful. The fact that you can add extra media to the maps is definitely key, and something other map-making sites utilizing Google Maps don’t tend to include.

Some questions

How are they hoping to make a profit from the site? Some of the categories don’t seem to be very different, such as places and knowledge. Could they define what the categories mean more specifically or allow maps to be added to multiple categories at once? Will they be making the site into more of a social network around maps, since users can already create profiles?

Updates