
Human joins Mapbox - Doctor_Fegg
http://human.co/posts/human-joins-mapbox.html
======
iamleppert
Mapbox is one of the companies I respect a lot. They are really undervalued in
terms of their contribution to many other companies who utilize both their
services (tiles, data, etc) as well as high quality open source mapping
frameworks.

And almost everything they have done is open source, with lots of blog posts
and knowledge sharing on how stuff is done.

I work at a drone company and most of our stuff (UI related) is built on top
of Mapbox. Couldn't do it without them.

~~~
zappo2938
They had an interesting start. They started as Development Seed[1] a Drupal
development house in and around DC that specialized in non-profit, NGO, and
government websites, web apps. They were working on a lot of Drupal projects
using geographic location data. They had some cool stuff and received hundreds
of thousands of dollars from the Knight Foundation to develop open source
mapping projects. I think in the beginning, 6 years ago, they used
OpenLayers[2], started creating their own tile sets and MapBox grew out of
that. One of the projects the Knight Foundation sponsored is Managing News[3]
which never really took off (awesome technology came out of the project but it
was kinda cheesy) but all the founders of MapBox heavily developed it
including Will White, Alex Barth, Young Hahn, Jeff Miccolis, and Tom
MacWright. As Development Seed matured they stopped wanting to store
configuration in the database which was one part of a huge battle between
Dries Buytaert and Earl Miles and the Development Seed crew who subsequently
dropped Drupal almost all of a sudden, stopped supporting their products
(responsibly as Phase 2 picked them up), PHP, and became an early adopter of
Node.js. That's when MapBox was spun from Development Seed. (I can't verify
anything I say is true.)

[1] [https://www.developmentseed.org/](https://www.developmentseed.org/)

[2]
[https://www.drupal.org/project/openlayers](https://www.drupal.org/project/openlayers)

[3]
[https://www.drupal.org/project/managingnews](https://www.drupal.org/project/managingnews)

~~~
incanus77
DSer/Mapboxer since 2010 here. More or less accurate.

~~~
zappo2938
History of MapBox.

1\. Development Seed created a heat map of crime in DC[1] and wanted dark
tiles. So 3 of the founders, Alex Barth, Jeff Miccolis, and Tom MacWright
created the Nice Map module[2] as a tile (WMS) management client for Drupal.

2\. Development Seed uses Mapnik to manage their WMS server [3]

3\. Development Seed started to share tile sets for maps hosted on AWS on
Mapbox.com.[4]

4\. The MapBox product is created and effort is put into it.[5]

5\. They created Maps on a Stick and iOS client apps [6]

6\. TileMill is released so people can create their own map tiles[7]

7\. Development jumps from Drupal and the LAMP stack to Node.js and MabBox.[8]

[1] [https://developmentseed.org/blog/2008/nov/18/hey-thats-
nice-...](https://developmentseed.org/blog/2008/nov/18/hey-thats-nice-map-new-
custom-mapping-module-drupal/)

[2]
[https://www.drupal.org/project/nicemap](https://www.drupal.org/project/nicemap)

[3] [https://developmentseed.org/blog/2008/dec/10/get-over-
first-...](https://developmentseed.org/blog/2008/dec/10/get-over-first-hump-
making-completely-custom-beautiful-maps-install-mapnik-ubuntu/)

[4] [https://developmentseed.org/blog/2009/dec/16/us-
congressiona...](https://developmentseed.org/blog/2009/dec/16/us-
congressional-districts-tiles-and-great-american-hackathon/)

[5] [https://developmentseed.org/blog/2010/feb/24/mapbox-world-
ti...](https://developmentseed.org/blog/2010/feb/24/mapbox-world-tiles-get-
update/)

[6] [https://developmentseed.org/blog/2010/oct/02/maps-stick-
vers...](https://developmentseed.org/blog/2010/oct/02/maps-stick-
version-2-released/)

[7] [https://www.mapbox.com/blog/announcing-tilemill-modern-
map-d...](https://www.mapbox.com/blog/announcing-tilemill-modern-map-design-
studio-powered-open-source/)

[8] [https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Development-Seed-abandon-
Drupa...](https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Development-Seed-abandon-Drupal)

~~~
incanus77
That puts it up to 2011, sure :)

------
dopamean
I really dislike the X joins Y wording of these kinds of statements. Is Mapbox
a league of companies in the mapping business? No. It's another company. Human
was acquired by, or maybe merged with, Mapbox. We cant we just say that? Is
there actually a good reason not to?

~~~
pveugen
Paul, founder of Human here. We chose the term "join" because it really feels
like we're joining forces. One of the reasons why are so excited about this is
the cultural fit and shared vision between both teams. We started Human for a
reason and Mapbox is just as mission driven. Glad that our team and app can
now be part of that.

Some more background on the why: [https://www.mapbox.com/blog/human-
mapbox/](https://www.mapbox.com/blog/human-mapbox/)

I'd be happy to answer any questions.

~~~
alexbeloi
Can you describe how money/shares/options get traded in a deal like this? Do
you get cash for your shares/options or do you get shares/options in Mapbox or
a mix of both?

~~~
pveugen
Yes, that's how it works ;). Unfortunately I can't share anything about the
deal terms.

------
awesomebob
> Thanks for your support on the first leg of this amazing journey.

[https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

~~~
swang
part of the "ourincrediblejourney" meme(?) is that they actually need to shut
down the product. that could still happen but until then it's not really a
"fuck you" to its customers if the app still works.

~~~
Analemma_
Shutting down the product is one way a company can qualify for
ourincrediblejourney. I would argue that another way is the "we're being
acquired by $RANDOM, so thanks for all your personal data!" track.

------
ryanjodonnell
Used to use Human a lot. Loved the app but it killed my battery, I was forced
to uninstall it :(.

That was about a year ago... wonder if they've improved it at all in that
area?

~~~
pveugen
We did. By a lot. A few months ago we implemented a new hibernation mode that
suspends location services more aggressively when you're not active. This
saves about 50-90% battery on an average day. The only downside of this
approach is that we can't show the first 100-200m on a map when you start
moving again. If you find that important, you could use the high accuracy
option at the expense of a bit more battery impact. Try it!

------
legulere
Didn't hear about Human before, I kind of wonder how this will work out with
Strava, which seems kind of similar and is a costumer of Mapbox.

~~~
pveugen
Strava and Human are pretty different products, where Human tracks everyday
activity, and Strava focuses on specific activities like running and cycling.
We became pretty close with the Strava team over the years and were honored to
count their leadership to our group of advisors. Being an avid Strava user
myself, I'm excited to work with Strava in my new role at Mapbox.

We're looking forward to sharing what we learned about the health & fitness
space, activity tracking, and mobile with all Mapbox customers.

