The future of mapping panel from South By Southwest

Microsoft’s Chris Pendleton, the technical evangelist for Bing Maps, led a fascinating panel at South By Southwest on Sunday morning with map experts from Foursquare, Twitter, Navtec and Flickr talking about the future of mapping.

The panelists discussed their anticipated future at which online maps are overlaid with more and more data: personal history of places you’ve been, social history of places your friends have been, and cultural history data of locations. Maps will include more detailed data on interior locations, and more visual data not only of photographs but videos.

The interesting development in mapping is what people are putting on the maps via social platforms, according to panel participant Laura Diaz of Navteq. More interesting scenarios will begin to emerge when we have indoor maps and people with mobile devices can begin to let others know what shop they are near within a mall, or what floor they are on within a high-rise building.

Dennis Crowley of Foursquare said his company is trying to get more and more specific on location.”Last year at SXSW, for Foursquare it was all about checking into convention center. That’s not really valuable. From our perspective, to check in at (a particular store) is more valuable than to just check in at the mall.” The goal, Crowley said, is more specificity of location, allowing friends to check in within a crowded conference hall, for example, and display their location near a wall or in the back of the hall.

Going forward, maps will become more and more visual, Kellen Elliott-MCCrea of Flickr predicted. “The parts that have really worked are about making it visual"

Today, maps are overlaid with photos. soon, maps with videos of the locations will be available.

The future of mapping is so dynamic, Chris observed, that users expect maps to be changing all the time.

Diaz agreed: “At any given time, a map means something different to you, depending on what you’re trying to do at that particular moment.”

Ryan Sarver of Twitter said that he looks forward to the time when expensive databases that are often necessary for new mapping applications is cheaper or broadly available enough for more and more competitors to create new, more fascinating applications.