Our intrepid gumshoe at Fusible.com has poked around some more, and now we have specifics about the kinds of features we can expect to see on mqVibe. It will sport tight Facebook integration, and it will combine reviews and popularity votes on neighborhoods and businesses into a "vibe score." AOL really is going to take a shot at Google Places and Yelp.

No, we didn't get an invitation. I guess we've been working too hard to blow mqVibe's cover. But denverpost.com did, and the embargo goes up early tomorrow morning.

JB at Fusible.com took some good guesses for other URLs around mqVibe and then viewed the source. By looking at the elements visible in the code, he uncovered tons of specifics about mqVibe's features. Here are the highlights he found:

• The subtitle for MQVibe is "Neighborhood Hotspots, Rankings & Reviews".
• The site will be integrated with Facebook. The Facebook page for Neighborhoodvibe will be located at: http://www.facebook.com/NeighborhoodVIBE
• You will be able to invite your Facebook friends to vote on hot neighborhoods and local hotspots and post items to your Facebook wall.
• Neighborhoods and hotspots will receive a vibe rank that you'll be able to vote up or down.
• Each place in MQVibe will be described by its vibe score and its underlying factors. These factors are based on crowd-sourced user behavior and physical characteristics of the place, such as the category and location of local businesses, density, features of the urban geography, and demographics.
• You will be able to quickly search by neighborhood or city according to a search form on the home page.
• MQVibe appears to be or is in alpha testing, according to a "Send Alpha feedback" link that appears at the top of several internal pages http://about.nvibe.com/help/report-issue/
• The Report Issue page offers some of the most telling information about the site's features (shown in the picture above). Using the Report Issue page, users can: suggest a hotspot, or correct a hotspot name or boundary; suggest adding a business that is missing; suggest a correction to the details of an existing business; report an issue with the ranking of a local business; report a business that is closed is still in the rankings; and report an issue with the neighborhood scores (Vibe Score, Walkability, Popularity, Edginess, etc.).
• Neighborhoodvibe will be the website's blog and will use WordPress as its publishing platform. The blog will be located at http://nvibe.mapquest.com/.
• The placeholder page for MQVibe online help can found at http://mqhelp.mapquest.com/mqvibe/.
A link in the footer refers to MQVibe as "Business Center".

Something Cool is Coming...

"Something cool is coming to your neighborhood," the mqVibe splash page reads. Really? Are any of the above features going to stand out? As we wrote when we confirmed mqVibe's existence, Google has a lot of these features, and they're already live and in use.

The Facebook integration could be interesting, since so many local businesses use their Facebook pages to interact with their customers, but that just makes AOL dependent on Facebook. Google is offering businesses something more tangible, though: a point of sale. Both Google Offers and AOL's Patch Deals can compete to give local customers the best deal, but AOL's hurdles to get users to adopt this service are so much higher.

What do you think? Does mqVibe have a chance? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Earlier this month, we reported on a slew of domain name purchases and trademark applications that indicated some kind of AOL social network was in the works. At the time, we figured it could have just been speculative. But no, it looks like AOL is serious. MapQuest will be the hub of AOL's effort to get on the social networking map.

The original Internet behemoth purchased NVIBE.com, NeighborhoodVibe.com and mqVibe.com this year. All of those domains point to the new "coming soon" page. AOL also registered a big portfolio of trademarks for each of these domains that indicate a location-based social networking service. Here's a selection:

Serial Number: 85419192
Online social networking services; online local and community social networking services

Serial Number: 85419185
Providing a website that enables users to connect with people in a particular neighborhood or city; Providing user-defined content and content of others selected and customized based on the known or estimated geographical location of users

Serial Number: 85419176
Providing neighborhood and community information in the fields of education, entertainment, local events and activities, current events, shopping, arts, culture, and sports; Providing information about community and neighborhood livability

Serial Number: 85419162
Providing geographic information, destination information, interactive maps, and driving directions via computer and communications networks; Providing information, news, and commentary in the field of travel via computer and communications networks

Serial Number: 85419151
Providing information and news in the field of local business

Now that we have a hint on the MapQuest website, it looks like we can expect a map-powered social network that combines location-based services for individuals, local news, information, entertainment and shopping, and travel directions like those MapQuest already offers. This is a space Google, Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp and others are all vying to control. AOL has been silent about this, but it's strongly positioned to make this play.

Google Maps may rule the roost, but MapQuest is good technology. Moreover, Patch, AOL's network of local news sites, is dying for a sustainable business model. AOL launched a daily deals platform tied to Patch in June, and a map-powered social news network would be an ideal place to market it. AOL has all the pieces it needs to build this thing. It just needs to put them together.

Can AOL Outdo Google?

It will need to do it well, though. Google is going wild in all of these areas. It bought The Dealmap to integrate its own daily deals into its Maps product, and it keeps expanding Google Offers to more markets. It bought Zagat to provide content for local business guides, a shot across the bow at Yelp. And Google's even going where AOL can't by pushing NFC payments for smartphones with Google Wallet, which would close the payments loop on all of these local business plays. If AOL is going to win this game, it has to swing for the fences.

Thanks very much to Fusible for three excellent scoops on the domain purchases and trademark applications.

Do you think AOL has a shot with its mqVibe neighborhood social network? Sound off in the comments.

Skyhook Wireless, the company that provides location services for a number of mobile apps, announced this morning that it would be integrating with MapQuest to provide a more accurate location for mobile app users. If you've ever tried to use something like Google Maps while navigating busy city streets, then you realize how important it is for your map to update quickly, lest you become lost in a maze of one-way streets and alleys.

Skyhook says that its methods for gathering location data provide just that - better data faster - and it will debut today with MapQuest's android app.

Skyhook's "Core Engine" provides location by using a hybrid of data from Wi-Fi hotspots, cell towers and GPS. The idea is that when a GPS signal is weak or unavailable, the service can use other data to more accurately determine location. And when GPS data is available, the addition of other signals is used to again increase accuracy. At the same time, Skyhook promises to deliver increased battery life, by relying less on GPS alone.

Skyhook identifies a couple of instances where it says its "hybrid positioning algorithms" can improve the user's experience:

Frequent users of navigation apps on smartphones know the headaches of trying to start a trip from inside a parking garage, or of following a route through the urban canyons of New York City. Everyone has a story of the costly wrong turn made due to a lost GPS signal and delayed navigation. These issues are primarily a result of the limitations in relying on GPS satellites, also a handicap of many other navigation apps. By using Skyhook's unique combination of Wi-Fi signals and GPS, MapQuest avoids these common GPS headaches.

The company also offers a video demonstrating its proposed improved capabilities. Now, we're not saying we don't believe them at all, but we're hoping to see it in action soon enough.

The MapQuest app also offers the turn-by-turn capabilities and takes advantage of Android's speech capabilities to offer a voice guide as well. The benefits of MapQuest over Google Maps comes from the former's use of OpenStreetMap (OSM), making the mapping app usable outside the U.S. and adding to it some user-submitted data.

The Android app is similar to MapQuest's iPhone offering and includes the following features: voice-guided, turn-by-turn navigation, voice search, a map toolbar, walking and driving directions, and live traffic flow information (updated every 5 minutes).

It's the OpenStreetMap component that makes MapQuest (and not just this Android app) an interesting alternative Google's efforts to map the world. OpenStreetMap offers what MapQuest describes as "a collaborative, 'by the people, for the people' mapping movement. It's basically a living map that is improved every day by people just like you." This allows users to correct and add information on the map, giving in many instances better local details, including information about local businesses.

MapQuest has already introduced similiar sites across Europe and Asia, but this site - open.mapquest.com - brings OSM data to the U.S.

"By using crowdsourced OSM data, Open.MapQuest.com is a 'living map,' improved by contributors who can easily add content and details that make the map more specific and useful," the company writes in its announcement. "Examples include detailed tourist attractions, biking and hiking trails, or even a simple feature such as footpaths through neighborhood parks."

MapQuest general manager Christian Dwyer told the Associated Press that MapQuest "would like to 'out-open' Google."

OpenStreetMaps has more than 320,000 users worldwide and each of these users can help report errors in mapping and help edit the map. The addition of a MapQuest overlay to OSM data means that users can get MapQuest-specific overlays, such as local attractions, restaurants, bars and driving direction.

Along with the launch of "MapQuest Open," as the project is called, AOL also announced a $1 million OpenStreetMap investment fund to support the growth of open-source mapping in the U.S. "MapQuest is the first large-scale mapping site to embrace the open-source community," said Jon Brod, executive vice president of AOL Ventures, Local and Mapping.

The fund is specifically targeted toward filling in gaps and adding data to the specific U.S. communities covered by AOL's hyperlocal news, business and event listing resource, Patch. At present, Patch supports select communities in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island. Localized editions of Patch include embedded maps across the site's many pages, displaying relevant news and events. The data on these maps already comes from OpenStreetMap, as opposed to MapQuest's own service.

AOL's head of engineering, Local and Mapping, Randy Meech, made the announcement of the company's new initiatives at the fourth annual international OpenStreetMap conference, State of the Map 2010, in Girona, Spain. One of the slides from Meech's presentation addresses the question many may have regarding this new project: "Why is it starting in the U.K., not the U.S.?" According to Meech, the U.K. and Germany are ahead in quality right now, and the "navigability needs improvement" in the U.S. The fund, obviously, should help with some of these issues.

Fighting Google and Bing with Open Source?

Steve Coast, founder of OpenStreetMap, praised AOL for its efforts, calling its move to join up with the open-source movement one that "represents rare foresight in recognizing that the future of map data will be a commons."

But for AOL, the move is likely less about the feel-good aspect of supporting open source and more of a calculated business decision. Using open data will allow the company to quickly ramp up its maps with more information and details, including things like bike paths, hiking trails, parks and neighborhood streets, without having to invest significant funds in order to do so. While the end result may not have the whizz-bang of competitors like Google Maps or Bing Maps with their Street Views, map applications, Bird's Eye views, 3D features and other advancements, the open maps may, in some cases, end up being more accurate thanks to the crowd-sourced data coming from local residents.

It's a smart strategy for a brand whose name was once so aligned with mapping it actually became a verb: "Just MapQuest it." Oddly enough, people often still say that today, but then head over to Google Maps instead. MapQuest hopes it's not too late to change that.

While this feature doesn't seem to be showing up for Google Maps quite yet, it looks like Mapquest 4 Mobile has released a new version that will speak driving directions and more.

This new version of MapQuest 4 Mobile not only speaks street names, meaning you don't have to take your eyes off the road, it does it quite well. The voice used in the app was quite understandable and gave not just the street name, but the entire direction, out loud. In addition to speaking the directions, the app also re-routes the directions automatically if you miss a turn - another must have for an in-car GPS system.

The latest version of MapQuest 4 Mobile also offers iOS4 compatibility, meaning background location. This update "allows MapQuest 4 Mobile iPhone to organize the myriad of purposes afforded by fast application switching and background GPS (via iOS 4) by continuing Voice Guidance  & Spoken Street Names whether on a call, listening to iPod, or saving battery with the application hidden."

Of course, our only complaint remains the same - the iPhone's GPS can, at timez, be absolutely terrible. We tried mounting the phone directly under the windshield and even holding it out the window to make sure nothing was blocking its view of the sky, but still it told us we were miles away in another location. When the signal is good, however, everything works great.

Beyond the new features, MapQuest 4 Mobile offers some standard ones that you find online with Google Maps, but not in the iPhone app, such as being able to avoid toll roads and highways or plot out walking directions instead of driving directions. The "avoid highways" feature alone is enough to make us download this app.

MapQuest 4 Mobile for the iPhone is available for download in the iTunes App Store.

The beta site offers a clean and uncluttered design, more discovery options and social networking integration, among other things.

With the new Mapquest, you can plot a route from point A to point B, as you could before, but you can also add additional stops to your trip and drag the directional points around to reorder the route. With the route mapped out, the "one box" search box at the top of the page then becomes a tool to discover points of interest and other stops along the way, like parks, gas stations, hotels, restaurants, etc. - everything you need to plan the perfect vacation or road trip.

The site's search functionality has also been overhauled, letting you enter as much as you know about an address...or as little. If you only know the intersection, for example, you can type that in. Or if you're looking for the location of a particular landmark, all you have to do is enter in the landmark's name. You can even enter in just a business name and the city. (In fact, we just tested this, entering in the misspelled restaurant name "Los Vallartos" instead of "Los Vallarta," and MapQuest figured it out, returning the correct listing. Handy!).

Going Social

But MapQuest doesn't want to just reclaim its name as the leader in online mapping, a title it lost to Google Maps, now dominating the space with 63.3 million uniques in May to MapQuest's 49.1 (figures, ComScore). It wants wants to function as a resource that "inspires and instigates discovery," says Christian Dwyer, MapQuest's GM.

To this end, MapQuest has now integrated with fellow AOL property, Patch, which provides news, business and event info for select areas in the U.S. (CA, NY, CN, MA and NJ). Online restaurant review and reservation site OpenTable has also been integrated, allowing visitors to make reservations directly from MapQuest. 

On the social front, MapQuest implemented a new feature called My Maps which allows for social sharing with services like Facebook and Twitter. Using MapQuest's "My Maps" feature, you can save a collection of your favorite places or create an itinerary and then share it with your friends on these social networks.

You can even use MapQuest itself as a sort of vacation diary itself, notes the company blog post, annotating a particular trip with notes which are stored under the "My Maps" section. (In our opinion, that feature is probably a bit more useful for storing personalized direction-related notes instead, like "look for the new McDonald's on the left then turn left." But yes, you could use it for trip diaries too.)

Cleaner, Uncluttered

The updated site features a new look as well. The familiar - and to some, unattractive - red lettering used to spell out the name "MapQuest" in the company logo has been replaced with a more modern and understated sans serif font in a deep blue-ish purple and green.

The site itself has foregone its usual clutter, with an enhanced focus on maps and directions, and not the surrounding ads.

This is the first redesign for MapQuest in 5 years. The beta period extends until August, at which point the beta will become the new default homepage.

Trend for MapQuest: Down

Overall, this looks like a good update for MapQuest, but these updates are only minor and won't be enough to win back users who have abandoned the service. Our friends at Experian Hitwise were kind enough to provide us with fresh traffic data for Google Maps, MapQuest, Bing Maps and Yahoo Maps. While MapQuest managed to edge out a slight lead in February, Google Maps now owns 45% of the market, while MapQuest's market share has fallen to 35%. Yahoo Maps is now at 6.6% (down from 10.2% in February) and Bing Maps owns 4.3% of the market (up from 3.6%).

For many Internet users, MapQuest is still synonymous with online mapping, but this group is shrinking and Google's relentless pace of releasing updates and new features isn't likely to let up anytime soon.

Today, MapQuest released its first iPhone app, MapQuest 4 Mobile (iTunes link), and after testing it for a while, it quickly became clear that MapQuest's app is a worthy challenger for the iPhone's built-in mapping application, which is based on Google Maps.

Directions and Local Businesses

Just like the MapQuest web site, the iPhone app focuses on finding local businesses and directions. One of the nicest features of the app is that you can save your maps and routes on the MapQuest.com web site and then retrieve them on your phone. Finding local businesses is also very easy thanks to a carousel with different types of businesses that sits at the bottom of the map. You can just click on the gas station icon, for example, and the map will highlight all the local service stations in the area.

With regards to giving directions, MapQuest 4 Mobile offers a number of very useful features, including the ability to add multiple stops. You can also easily email links to maps and directions directly from the phone. Of course, the app is not a full-blown GPS application like the forthcoming Tom Tom for iPhone, but when you hold the phone in landscape mode, the app will bring up a nice oversized display with the next turn that is very easy to read (though you should probably let your passengers handle the app while you're driving anyway).

Plans for iPhone 3.0?

It will be interesting to see how and if MapQuest will make use of the new features in the upcoming iPhone 3.0 release. After all, these will include push notifications and the ability to provide turn-by-turn directions (MapQuest's BlackBerry app already offers this as a subscription service through AT&T). We have already heard from some companies that plan to use push notifications to send out alerts based on a user's location, and apps like MapQuest 4 Mobile and its competitors could definitely benefit from these new features in iPhone 3.0.

According to Hitwise's Heather Hopkings, Google came very close to catching up with MapQuest in December, but somehow, MapQuest managed to gain some ground again in January. Currently, MapQuest holds 39.49% of the market share in the US and Google Maps is at 35.67%.

Update: Hitwise just supplied us with a new graph that includes data for Live Maps and Yahoo Maps.

What is even more interesting, though, is that most of MapQuest's traffic comes from 'brand searches' - that is users who specifically search for 'mapquest.' Eight out of the top ten search terms leading to MapQuest were variations of its brand name and they accounted for 62% of MapQuests' visitors. For Google Maps, only two out of the top ten search terms were branded and they only accounted for 4.2% of Google Maps' traffic.

Old Habits

It is quite amazing how MapQuest manages to hang on to its top position. Google Maps gets over 60% of its traffic from Google itself, yet it seems that using MapQuest, even though it is barely keeping up with the latest technological advancements on the Internet, is still synonymous with online mapping for a majority of Internet users.

In many ways, this means that a service like Microsoft's Live Maps, which is holding on to a very distant third fourth place, is fighting an uphill battle, even though it provides a number of features like its Birds Eye View that even Google Maps doesn't have. For a lot of mainstream users, however, having access to the latest features doesn't necessarily translate into a reason to switch away from an established service.

To get directions, users can now click on "Get Directions" in the newly added blue bar on top of the maps. This redesigned interface for getting directions is actually a bit easier to use, though finding the 'walking' directions is now a tad bit harder as well, as it is hidden in a drop-down menu instead of always being on screen as a link on top of the directions.

Google is obviously putting a lot of resources into its mapping product and given how important location based services are going to become in the future, this seems like a wise long-term investment. Google's competitors are, of course, not sleeping either. Microsoft also constantly updates Live Maps and it has become a worthy competitor to Google Maps - especially with its high-resolution "bird's eye" views.

However, Live Maps suffers from the same branding problem as the rest of Microsoft's Live brand and with Google slowly expanding Street View into more rural areas, the new walking directions, and constantly updated maps, Google might just overtake Mapquest one day as the Internet's most popular mapping destination.

The Google Maps team just announced the addition of a new feature to Google Maps: the ability to contribute to and edit maps through Google Map Maker. Users can now edit and moderate various map features, including roads, lakes, power lines, and bike trails among others.

While Google already allows users to create and share new map layers through 'My Maps', this is the first time it is actively looking for help in creating maps (almost) from the ground up.

Basically, these are all countries that could, as the Google Maps team puts it, "benefit tremendously from local knowledge and expertise that you and other map makers posses, and we're excited to see how you put that to use."

Those maps that are currently available for editing vary greatly in the detail already available for them. Barbados already has a relatively complete set of roads, while Vietnam is almost completely devoid of any details outside of the major cities and St. Vincent and the Grenadines are nothing but gray blobs on the map so far.

The editing functions of Map Maker are extremely easy to use and it is probably only a question of time before more users start using their local knowledge to add to these often bare maps. For most of us, however, the real question is when Google will open up the rest of its maps for editing at this low level - or if this is even desirable.

"The same is true for 'driving directions,' 'map' and "directions' as well as variations on the MapQuest brand name including 'mapquest driving directions' and 'map quest,'" wrote Hitewise's Heather Hopkins. Is Google favoring its own property? Maybe. But I'm honestly surprised MapQuest is still so far out in front.

Google's service has long been the better option. Certainly, AOL has improved the MapQuest service in the past year, and the beta version that they launched in October fixes some of the most glaring pain point still evident in the classic service, such as the lack of multipoint directions and 4 imput boxes for location. But even so, MapQuest consistently lags behind Google in ease of use, design, functionality, and innovation.

Google's is continuously innovating with their Maps service, in the past year adding useful features like Street View (helpful if trying to find a building you've never been to before), MyMaps, which has enabled all sorts of cool maps mashups (like this one mapping the results of the New Hampshire primaries), and draggable destinations when plotting trips.

So why is it that people still use MapQuest when Google is clearly the superior product? The answer is in the brand. MapQuest has been around since the mid-90s and the name was firmly ingrained in our collective psyche during the first dot com boom. As the search volume of "mapquest" vs. "google maps" shows, the name MapQuest is still synonymous with online mapping. Still, Google also has a strong brand (the most powerful in the world last year, according to Millard Brown Optimor), and Google has one thing AOL and MapQuest don't have: control of the world's search market. Expect Google Maps to continue taking market share in online mapping.