Visualize Recent Edits to Google Maps

Forget Orkut, Google’s best homegrown social product might just be Google Maps. Today the Maps team has released a “Recent Edits” feature that shows you the most recent updates people have made to locations in Google Maps. Basically, it’s a visualization of the feature that the company released in November that allows users to move their location on a map so it’s more accurate. Stylistically, this feature is similar to Twittervision, which shows you the most recent Tweets from around the globe in a mashup with Google Maps.

Although more of a “that’s cool” feature than something incredibly useful, the visualization does highlight the growing importance of social features in Google Maps. They’ve also recently released collaborative maps, community maps, and in Google Earth you can now see geo-tagged YouTube videos.

The efforts seem to be paying off. Last week, Hitwise published statistics showing that Google Maps is quickly catching up to MapQuest. A year ago, MapQuest was 5x more visited than Google Maps; in 2007, that lead narrowed to barely more than 2x.