Apple Maps now lets small business owners add their own info
When Tim Cook apologized for Apple Maps in 2012, he promised to do everything to make the app better. The company's latest push to improve its navigation app involves putting all the small businesses it can on Apple Maps -- that is, with a little help from the owners themselves and a new portal called Maps Connect. The service lets owners add or edit their establishments' locations and gives them the opportunity to beef up their their profiles with their website, Yelp , Facebook and/or Twitter pages. They can even sign up for iBeacon (the company's indoor tracking tech) installation on the page, though at the moment, Apple's prioritizing businesses with more than a million visitors every year and offer WiFi throughout their premises.
If this initial crowdsourcing effort makes Apple Maps a lot better (Google, for one, thinks crowdsourcing's a solid idea to improve its own app, hence the Waze acquisition), we wouldn't be surprised if Apple launches other, similar projects. According to SearchEngineLand, Maps Connect is only open to folks in the US for now, but the company promises to add more countries in the future.
