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"MapQuest.com launched in 1996 as an early pioneer of both location-based services and the interactive web \u2014 two fields that have since exploded. Barry Glick led the company as its CEO for eight years preceding its sale to AOL for a stock deal valued at $1.1 billion. \nSince then, he has served as partner or CEO to a number of location-based service companies including mobile GPS navigation company Webraska, real-time geospatial data company ObjectFX, and geo-encryption company GeoCodex.\nThe company at which he is currently chairman, SmartRealm, is a departure from much of his previous work in that its specialty is in mapping social networks, not geographical location. Glick recently spoke with Mashable about how SmartRealm's new \"maps\" will change the way brands advertise, the future of location-based services, and how what he originally thought was a product demo ended up becoming MapQuest.\n\n\n1. What trails do you think MapQuest blazed and how do you think it contributed to the Internet as we know it today?\nMapQuest was a little bit unique...because in the very early days of the world wide web, if you were Coca-Cola or McDonald's, you put out basically a brochure on the web, and you took your other stuff that you may have had in print and converted it to HTML, and people could go through pages of it as you would a brochure. It was not truly interactive.\nMapquest was, I think, one of the very first things on the web that was truly interactive in the sense that we did not have predetermined pages. There were no pages. Everything was generated when people wanted it. So when people said, \"I\u2019m interested in a map of 1631 W. Wellington, Chicago, IL,\" that map would be generated on the spot and delivered to you \u2014 personalized and done in real time.\nPeople were kind of like, \"Wow, that sort of opens the door to so much other stuff that you could do on the web.\" We were proud of that, because of that transition from brochure to truly interactive media. I think that was sort of the meta thing. But the more concrete thing, in terms of pioneering, was of course the beginnings of location-based services and the idea that maps and directions and other things related to a location could be delivered very effectively via the web. That sort of changed the landscape of mapping, which has of course evolved a lot since then, too. But it was kind of an important step in the process.\n\n\n2. I noticed that you have a PhD in geography. When you were getting your PhD did you know that you would be working with location-based information on the Internet?\nNo, certainly not on the Internet. That didn\u2019t exist, or only existed in laboratories, and I was not aware of it.\nI actually had done a lot of work in computer science as well as in geography, so the application of computers to geography, where geography is really the science and art of location, was what I was interested in. Early on, that was computer graphics, which was basically, \"How do I use a computer to...draw maps? How do I analyze the data related to location and produce a map in software?\" So that\u2019s kind of what I was into. That was not the Internet, but it translated pretty well once the Internet, and especially the world wide web in the early 90s, came out.\n\n\n3. With MapQuest, was there an \u201Ca ha moment?\"\nNo, it was more evolutionary, and also a little bit more a matter of recognizing that it could be an \"a ha moment\" once it already was happening, rather than ahead-of-time thinking about it and saying, \u201Ca ha.\u201D\nThis software we had developed was running on computers, but not of course connected to the Internet or the world wide web. So we were out showing the software to potential clients or customers \u2014 and these were people like the big airline reservation systems or the big real estate multiple listing systems \u2014 and telling them, \"Hey, you can do this mapping stuff on computers.\"\nWe wanted an easier way to demonstrate to them remotely. Some of the engineers said, \"If we put it onto the web, people could kind of access it themselves and look at it and play around with the results and get a feel for it.\" And I said, \"That\u2019s a fantastic idea, let\u2019s do that as long as it\u2019s not too big of a deal, and it wasn\u2019t.\"\nConsumers just used it so much, they brought down the servers, and then we had the \"aha moment\" that this is something that isn\u2019t just a demo for our customers, this is something that everybody needs and let\u2019s go as fast as we can and make it as big as we can.\n\n\n4. If MapQuest was the beginning of the location-based service space, where do you see future opportunities for location-based services?\nThe biggest opportunity for location-based services is basically location-based services going away as a concept ... Location is going to be in the background, working with people as an added dimension along with people\u2019s interests and their friendships and how those relate to the physical world where location is important. I think that certainly in social networks and in search \u2014 those are the really big ones and then there are all the minor and specific things like real estate or travel \u2014 but all of those are going to build on the foundation of searching things by location, finding people by location, and all of that being kind of searching the whole web of knowledge with location as one of the keys that you use to search, and make that accessible as you\u2019re mobile.\n\n\n5. What made you want to be the CEO of SmartRealm?\nI\u2019m kind of a sucker for things that are potentially game-changing and especially when they relate to a mega trend like social media and social networks. And SmartRealm has a technology that I think goes a little beyond what\u2019s available. And it just seemed like a way to take things to the next level.\nI\u2019ve always been involved in information and analysis. And this was basically trying to take the huge amount of information that\u2019s now being generated through social media and making it useful to people in a specific way. That\u2019s at a very broad level what SmartRealm does.\n\n6. Useful to whom?\n\nI think starting with brands. That\u2019s where there\u2019s immediate interest and basically the ability to justify with a return on investment why companies should use some of their scarce resources to do this.\nBut I think it goes beyond brands to human resources, to product management\u2026Governments are interested and universities are interested, so it does go beyond brands.\n\n\n7. How does SmartRealm work?\nIt\u2019s hard to do, but it\u2019s simple to explain... Our focus is on activities on social networks. We take those that are relevant for a specific brand \u2013- to use the brand example \u2014 and then we keep track of who is taking other actions, like re-posting something or \"Liking\" something or rating something. We keep track of all those relationships so that we can kind of create the network. So we start with the social media, which is the actual postings and content, and then we generate the network, sometimes called a social graph, and then basically the brands use that to be able to tell who are the \u2013- and here I\u2019m very careful about the term, but I\u2019ll just throw the term out \u2013- influential people for my specific purpose...and I want to know who, based on activities, not just on their demographics, who are the most likely people to be my advocates or word-of-mouth people for a specific purpose.\n\n\n8. How does this change the way that brands run a campaign?\n[Brands] want to know, \"Who do I reach out to with the initial interaction, engagement?\" I may want to send samples out...and we\u2019re trying to target those to the key people to create the buzz and the effective word of mouth.\nInstead of viewing the audience as one big mass of people and having this old-fashioned one-to-many type of marketing, or even just dividing it up demographically, it allows you to really zoom in on people who have specific interests and also to reach parts of your network who can reach some hard-to-reach people who haven\u2019t been engaged...So basically it gives you \u2014 from my background it's easy to put it in these terms \u2014 it\u2019s sort of like a map of your social network audience, and it allows you to do targeted marketing.\nMore Business Resources from Mashable:\n- Drupal Founder on Why Open Source is Good for Business [INTERVIEW]- WordPress Founder on the Key to Open Source Success [INTERVIEW]- 7 Questions With AOL Co-Founder Steve Case- 6 Tips on Starting a Digital Business from the Founder of Pandora- Yelp Co-Founder on Recovering From Legal Controversy [INTERVIEW]\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2010/11/30/mapquest-founder-interview/>