YAYBIA!: Babysitting Your Brand Online

The city of Minneapolis recommends MapMyRide.com on its bike paths website, so I checked it out in an effort to motivate myself to bike out all the beer calories I consumed last night. The service lets users overlay their routes on a Google map and calculate distance and elevation. I was disappointed at the inability to see actual city bike paths on the mashup, but I liked drawing my route and browsing other user-created routes in my area. Riders and runners can share their favorite routes and answer each other's questions on a discussion board.

Some downfalls: The social features should be expanded so users can comment on each other's routes or click to see routes in their region, rather than getting text search results. Advanced search features like route distance or zip code would be helpful, too. Turns out MapMyRide is part of the MapMyFitness network, which has separate sites for runs, walks, triathlons, etc, that should be interoperable for the best usability. But all in all, MapMyRide gives a valuable service to its niche audience.

Great for users? Yes. But even better for advertisers. The super-specific target makes buying banner ads a no-brainer for companies like Nike, Easton, Adidas, etc. Even better, brands can put their icons directly along users' routes and remind them that the closest Michelin store (as seen on the screenshot) is just a few blocks away. Opportunities like these are why niche + local is the future of social networking.

So I sat down to blog all this and Googled the service to see how old it was (aka how out of the loop I've been about it). I found an old Lifehacker post from 2007 (yep, really out of the loop) where users had commented about MapMyRide's shortcomings. One user remarked that he wished the service would let users automatically plan routes along roads, rather than having to click at every turn. The next comment delighted me:

Hi Joe-

Jeff from MapMyRide here. As for your request on following roads- we have it! Look for the "follow roads" checkbox under map settings.

Congratulations, MapMyRide, for taking care of your brand and your users. Now anyone who sees that post won't be deterred by Joe's complained, and they'll see that the MapMyRide staff actually cares about user comments and concerns. I follow the Target Addict blog, whose author is having more and more bad experiences with the brand. Target needs to take MapMyRide's lead: comment on her post with a public apology and send her a gift card to stimulate a happy post about how she takes it all back. The worst thing a brand can do is alienate their biggest advocates, especially in the blogosphere. You built your brand, now Google it and protect it!

All right, I've procrastinated enough. Now I'm off for a bike ride, which will make me feel a whole lot better about all the beveries I plan to consume tonight.

UPDATE: Turns out those advanced search features I'd been craving are built in--but just in the map view. The more I use this site, the more I like it!

UPDATE 2: Check it out! Map My Ride just launched a redesign!