Soso Maps Resumes Street View Service
36kr, 12/14/12
Tencent's (0700.HK) online search engine Soso has resumed provision of the site's street view service. Soso launched its street view service in December of 2011. In May, the service was shut down due to "street mapping industry rules" being developed by the Chinese government. After the re-launch of the service, Soso street view is again the only street view-style mapping service available in China.
The service currently covers Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xi'an, and Lhasa. Maps for a number of other cities are still in the approval process.
According to Soso, the re-released version of Soso street view is "ten times" more comprehensive than the original and covers over 70 tourist spots, 6 major cities, and night-time imagery of more than 10,000 locations. Soso has also worked with student groups at 66 universities nation-wide to provide college campus street view imagery.
The new version of Soso street view has strengthened the service's private information protection abilities. Soso has established a team that will vet Soso street view for any private material and blur out license plates, people's faces, and other imagery. After Soso's privacy team has processed the imagery, photographs will undergo another round of examination from Soso, and finally be reviewed by related government authorities before being published.
Tencent will continue to implement an open platform strategy for Soso and will allow both upstream and downstream partners to interface with various Soso tools.
Editor's Note: For more information on this topic, please see "Soso Updates Street View Mapping Service," MD 3/23/12 issue.
Keywords: online mapping Internet online search Soso Tencent 0700.HK
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