Travellers have you been schmapped
Schmap is a location technology service provider and local publisher. Its services focus on the intersection of local, social, commercial and the real-time web. Schmap is best known for its real-time city guides and its Twitter services, Schmaps & Schnaps and Know Your Twitter Followers. Schmap was founded in 2004 and is based in Carrboro, North Carolina, with a development office in Beijing, China.
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Know Your Twitter Followers
In 2011, Schmap released "Know Your Twitter Followers," a service that allows Twitter users to analyze their followers. Any individual, company or brand can get immediate access to aggregate in-depth demographic analysis of their Twitter followers with a free, summary analysis. Users can also pay for a full analysis and targeted follower lists. The site allows users to compare these demographics to Twitter averages, graph and map these comparisons, download the statistics to a .CSV format file, and refresh an analysis for a fee.
Other features include profile credits for detailed snapshots that reveal who follows other accounts and who tweets about brands and keywords.
To compute each analysis, Schmap evaluates data that followers have chosen to make public on Twitter, including their names, locations, bios, etc., and semantically processes and parses this data using a series of proprietary algorithms.
This service was featured in Mashable's Spark of Genius Series after the release of its beta version in October 2011.
Real-Time Guides
Schmap also publishes city guides on www.schmap.com that are updated in real-time and include local buzz for restaurants, bars and other venues from Twitter users. The site includes venue descriptions and reviews from local residents; photos from more than 300,000 contributing photographers; and events, activities, and local deals from customers and local business owners. These events are gathered from Twitter or made by users of another Twitter service by Schmap, "schmaps & schnaps."
Schmap.com highlights the 52 "top buzz" cities worldwide and hundreds of smaller cities and towns in the United States, Australia, Canada and the UK. Visitors to the site can also browse events and reviews by selecting a city's neighborhood or by searching for key terms.
This real-time content is also cross-posted to various Twitter accounts managed by Schmap, including an account for (a) most every city's wining and dining reviews and (b) events in that city. Followers of these accounts can also opt-in to receive daily direct messages of deals and events.
Schmaps & Schnaps
Released in October 2009, Schmaps & Schnaps is an application found at www.schmap.it and the Apple App Store for promoting local business and events on Twitter. The free, basic service allows users to create a "schmap"—a web page with an interactive map and event details—and/or a "schnap"—a web page with a gallery of uploaded photos and images—and schedule tweets and direct messages that include a link to the web page. Users can also link their Facebook account to their Schmap account and make schmaps based on events that they have been invited to or created on Facebook. Schmaps & schnaps can also be cross-posted to Facebook straight from www.schmap.it.
The paid service, an upgrade to a PRO account, gives local businesses and event promoters access to advanced marketing features like key metrics tracking and a choice to remove ads. Approved partners can offer the service to their users via Schmap's API/Plugin. Approved users can also integrate their schmaps and schnaps into the real-time guides for greater exposure.
Travel Guides
Schmap first published free digital travel guides for destinations throughout Europe and the United States, as well as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The company’s travel guides are available for download at www.schmap.com, along with a small computer program that interacts with a Web browser to display the guides called the Schmap Player. The Schmap Player is currently available for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.
In 2006, Schmap had released more city or island guides than the number offered by traditional paper guidebook publishers Frommers, Lonely Planet, and Fodors. By 2008, more than 200 city or island guides had been published, and could be accessed by iPhone and iPod Touch users.
Schmap combines its own Vector Map technology with map data licensed from Tele Atlas, city information and reviews from WCities, and tourist photos from Flickr to create the Schmap guides.
The hallmark feature of the Schmap guides is their interactivity: users can create their own dynamic, printable maps with links, tours, and photos of their favorite sights.
The Schmap Player also includes custom map tools for measuring distance, bookmarking points of interest, zooming, panning, and playing a tour sequence.
Schmap allows users to download an entire group of travel guides in a “Schmap Pack” with one mouse click. Two different types of Schmap Packs are currently available, those grouped by geography such as European capitals, California, or Canada, and theme packs such as “Vineyards and Vintages”, “World of Golf”, and “Cruise Destinations”.
The Schmap Guides are entirely free to consumers, with Schmap relying on sales from its travel store, advertising, and licensing revenue from its commercial customers for financial support.