Virtual Earth 3D Maps are Shaking Things Up

It’s been amazing to see the way that open map APIs, like those opened up to developers from the likes of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, have shaken up the real estate industry. It especially affects those who are creating web-based tools or applications for the real estate space.

Yesterday, Microsoft unveiled the newest iteration of Virtual Earth, allowing 3D views of specific cities. The most interesting change though is the fact that Microsoft now allows advertising in this 3D environment – Joel reports that ZipRealty and John L. Scott are the two first movers in the real estate industry to use it.

I have two main thoughts on this new functionality. First, I like the way it looks and the tweaks that have been done to the map interface. We’ve been playing around with it on eppraisal.com, and have found it very usable though it is messing with some of our controls.

My second thought is that as a map lover, I don’t really like the garish billboard advertising. It seems a little bit too intrusive for me. I understand the value to advertisers, but I’m not sure if I like how much it is in my face. Now, the advertising will only be within the free version of the map. Users like ourselves who pay Microsoft the licensing fees to put the map in our application won’t (shouldn’t) have this in there.

Time will tell if the web will accept this type of advertising or not. Also, what I don’t like is that it’s not cross-platform compliant and doesn’t work on Firefox. My logs show me that a good 30% of our users are on Firefox or a Mac, so that means something to us. Either way, it’s very well done and a great new step towards interactivity on the map interface.