Founded in 2019, Atly is a user-generated social mapping Israeli startup. It was founded by three members, Uriel Maslansky (CEO), Aviad Coppenhagen (CTO), and Joshua Kaufman (Product) after they got frustrated with the fact that mapping and finding destinations is one of the only aspects of life left untouched by user-generated content.
In an interview with Geospatial World, Uriel states, “People were trying to “feature-hack” their way through finding and saving places to go on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook that were never meant for the discovery of location-based information, as well as suffering from out-of-date and untrustworthy results on Google Maps and other mapping and review platforms. This massive gap in how people discover new destinations and activities is what drove us to create Atly.”
Atly combines the power of social media-like knowledge sharing with mapping and location discovery tools to fuel a seamless, high-fidelity search experience that allows people to find their next favourite place. “We have over 120k users and more than 6,500 organically created map-based communities around the world,” adds Maslansky.
The mapping industry has gone virtually uninterrupted since 2007 when Google Maps overtook MapQuest as the dominant mapping platform. It was only in 2012 when Apple Maps was released that Google Maps had some competition, but even the largest company in the world was only able to capture about 10% market share.
Atly is all about bringing mapping up to speed with the modern world. We are rethinking mapping and focusing on being the next paradigm shift; we are bringing innovative concepts and new technology into the ecosystem by combining the wisdom of the crowd with the ease and utility of the existing finding-your-next-favorite-place platforms. Specific location technologies include a robust location recommendation system for giving people personalized exploration, and tools for creating and managing community maps. Because we are innovating what information is shown on the map, we have to deal with a lot of technological (or algorithmic) problems that nobody has had to solve before. For example, each Atly user will see a different map based on the specific maps they join, filter tags, or searches, requiring advanced technology for live rendering of maps.
Atly has a much larger vision of becoming the de facto platform among the younger generation for discovering their next favourite place.
The beauty of the user-generated content that makes up our communities is that the recommendations are validated by the wisdom of the crowd, reflecting trustworthy information. On top of that, all of our map-based communities are controlled by community managers that take care of the quality of the data.
Regarding data privacy, keeping our users’ data secure is a cornerstone of our development process. We stay up to date and meet the latest standards widely accepted for development in order to protect our users and their data.
Our recent funding will enable us to continue improving Atly’s state-of-the-art algorithms and overall performance, to release much anticipated product features and updates, and to collaborate with additional creators. We are also currently growing our US user base, on an individual city by city basis.
There are numerous product features that will be rolling out throughout the end of this quarter. These features will include new discovery capabilities, updates to the maps that better highlight the number of recommendations a place has received, connect users to their friends’ recommendations, and monetization tools to promote map monetization for creators.
Over the next five to ten years, we plan to grow Atly into the one-stop-shop for all location-based needs, while continuing to provide the most trusted and authentic, user-generated and live content from those who know these spaces best.
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