GeoWorld: Can you briefly describe the recently released school attendance boundary data, and more importantly its significance in the market?

Clement: Maponics School Boundaries is a GIS dataset that is the first to include explicit school attendance zone (SAZ) boundaries: the areas around public schools that define the households that attend them. In addition to locally sourced public school attendance zone (SAZ) boundaries for covered metro areas, the product dataset includes nationwide coverage of school district boundaries as well as private and public school locations and profiles.

The product release is significant because, for the first time, companies and organizations can display homes, business and other points of interest in relation to the exact attendance area covered by specific public schools.

GeoWorld: What are some markets/applications that you see for such data?

Clement: With an integrated view into school districts, attendance zones and school point data, organizations can support and enable additional detail and value in the following use-case scenarios:

• Home buyers, real estate agents, brokers and appraisers can easily visualize a direct association between home locations and related public school options.

• Local search engine visitors can see school points and related boundaries in context with search results for products, services and directions.

• Direct marketers and advertises can tailor messages to households at the school attendance zone level.

• Federal, state, and local government analysts and policymakers can view school points, attributes and boundaries to add context to planning and decision-making activities.

GeoWorld: What does it mean that “companies are being forced to go hyper-local to maintain their competitive edge in business?”

Clement: Consumers and citizens have recognized the value of information, products and services that originate from and intended for their local communities. Hyper-local content generally relates to people, locations and events that happen in a well-defined, culturally recognized community area.

Since hyper-local content, including marketing messages, is valued over more-general content, businesses need to communicate at that level to effectively reach local audiences. That is partly why Maponics School Boundaries and, even more so, Neighborhood Boundaries are so important to companies as a means for them to systematically identify and target households at the hyper-local level.

GeoWorld: How will such “hyper-localness” affect the industry in short and long terms?

Clement: The amount of raw data about consumers’ locations, transactions and preferences available to businesses is staggering. We expect that companies who can effectively identify and mine this raw data to micro-target audiences will be more successful—driving the value and demand for more granular location-based data.

GeoWorld: What are the effects of social media on the GIS industry?

Clement: It is clear from the growth of services such as Foursquare and from recent Twitter enhancements that the idea of place is a critical component of social media and networking. Earlier this year, Twitter announced that they licensed GIS data from Maponics to provide the place of origin for Twitter users who opted to provide their location at that level.

We see this trend continuing with more and more demand for translating simple longitude and latitude coordinates or points associated with an Internet service provider into locations that are meaningful in a social context. For instance, we see significant value for social networking services to provide school-age members the option to share their location as their school, if their social networking post originates within the boundaries of their school attendance zone. This may enable young social-networking users to share their location without divulging their exact coordinates.

GeoWorld: How is Maponics adjusting to the new media and technologies?

Clement: Like all companies, we are always striving to communicate effectively with our target audience. We recently completed a complete overhaul of our Web site to do the following:

• Make it much easier for site visitors to find what they are looking for.

• Offer more interactive maps and demos.

• Expand the number of Maponics bloggers, and open the blog to more comments and dialog.

We also started a Maponics Twitter page last year to keep people up to date on developments at Maponics.