Founded out of Israel in 2019, Atly claims to be creating the “next social paradigm for mapping and discovering places to go.” It’s all about finding new restaurants, hiking trails, bike rental places, gluten-free eateries, record stores, rooftop bars, free public toilets, and all the rest.
Through the web or mobile app, users can create their own theme-specific community, after which they become the manager for that community, including setting rules for engagement and permissions around what other users can do in that community.
According to Maslansky, Atly is not generating any revenue itself yet, but some of its users are already earning by “gating their community” to paid members.
It’s true that Google is rather slow nowadays in developing exciting new features (just look at far ahead Waze was on that front, so they got bought out), but there is also a lot to be said about “where most people are”. That “where” is often the “why” which stops users migrating off to a new service, because their contacts are all in one place and there is a mass of useful information already available. So certainly, in this regard Google Maps has pretty good reviews, ratings, photos, and other info (as does Yelp). But possibly Atly will appeal to non-Google Map users still.
But what Atly is hoping will differentiate it, is a truly more social aspect, versus just a map with lots of reviews just posted to it. The Reddit concept has worked well, but it has no geolocation / mapping type organisation.