Much of the progress came from importing the TIGER roads data.
I don't know it first hand, but the story is that other maps of the US were in pretty good shape and data was relatively available (either the TIGER data, or from states and counties), so interest wasn't very high.
Suprisingly OSM does not have a lot of users in USA for it's size. All data (incl. map data) from the US government is public domain, so the USA has access to a lot of free map data. But in Europe (specifically the UK), the government map data is heavily closed. Hence OSM was started in the UK.
But is that public domain data any good? Mappers in the US are still using MapRoulette to clean up Tiger imports etc.
I think it's also that many Europeans, especially Germans, are very sceptical of google while in the US google gets a lot of love, especially these days with fiber.
No not really. Some people think the import into OSM of TIGER data has hindered the creation of a US OSM community, because the map looks "good enough"/"looks done", when it in reality it's not.
Thanks! This reminded me to look up the area I'm visiting today and see what I could do. Turns out there was a big old lake missing, so signed up and added it. Easy and fun!
I would like to know about OSM process for separating good contributions from bad ones. Similar non-map projects could benefit from learning how they did and how they do.
There isn't really a process at all. The barrier to entry is so high that those dedicated enough to map usually make it through with good intentions.
Mapping is really hard, and even with all the work we (OSM) have done to make it easier, we still get far less than 1 percent of our users to actively contribute.
I think the maps are very good but all Android maps I have tried that use OSM have terrible search interface.
In Google I can type in "IKEA Burbank" and get the right result. I can't do that in any of the OSM apps.
I also need to know in what city a certain street is. I can't do "1234 Foothill, Los Angeles" like in Google but I need to know that this number is in Glendale.
If they fixed this I think adoption would go up a lot.
I would like to see, some mobile OS bundle OpenSteetMap or a app which becomes a hit on top of OSM. The usablity of any map will be its data, and I feel OSM lacks compared to GMap or Bing map.
There already are many apps based on data coming from OSM. The notorious Apple Maps takes some of its data in OSM. I've also heard good things about City Maps 2 Go [0] [1], which is also based on OSM data. I personnally use OSMAnd [3] on android, which has the benefit of being open source.
> I feel OSM lacks compared to GMap or Bing map.
OSM compares quite well to contenders when talking about raw geographical data. However, where GMap shines is locations: you can search a shop, a restaurant or a diving club on GMap and it will give you its position. OSM doesn't have this power, which is actually understandable given that OSM's goal is mostly geographical data.
There's no (or at least very little) resistance to adding POIs to OSM. In well mapped areas, the data in OSM can be a lot more accurate than the geocoded addresses that Google often shows you.
There's not really any great search interfaces for it (where part of great is limiting the results to 'nearby'). Komoot/Photon is a nice way to find something you know the name of:
Telenav employee here - we've been navigating exclusively on OSM since June for both iOS and Android (Scout Maps App). We also acquired Skobbler earlier in the year, which navigates using OSM if you're outside the US.
I've been wanting to look into the Scout/Skobbler SDK for a while now. I'll either be using that or Mapbox for some mobile/web apps. Do you have any insights to push me in your direction?
The points that differentiate us depend on your specific application. We have robust routing/turn by turn nav, offline maps, data visualization (heat maps) plus a whole bunch of other common features (custom styling, for example).
Definitely check out our dev site, which admittedly lacks some polish but is coming along (http://developer.skobbler.com/) and let me know if you'd like to talk to one of our SDK guys - they always want to talk to devs about their specific use cases.
There are a few power users of OSM. Like, MapQuest and FourSquare. However, either of those have neither the detailed information of Google/Bing nor their popularity, so I see your point.
Facebook is also in the business of having a landing page for every semi interesting place (I think this is one of the things that drove Google to push Google+ so hard).
I don't know if it's a "hit", but Ulmon makes maps based on OSM data which are a great resource when traveling. Being usable offline is particularly awesome (and something we should be able to take for granted, but I digress).
https://mvexel.github.io/thenandnow/#10/52.2644/5.2899