Crowdmapping – a better way to walk around the city

A new and ambitious website labeled TBD, and built on the popular Ushahidi platform, has emerged in an effort to report and map metro issues throughout Washington DC.  TDB launched a crowdsourced map where you can see such city ‘glitches’ as which escalator is out of order, where there’s no parking, or any other problems that can cause you trouble while navigating the city.

TBD's Crowdsourced Washington Map

TBD is a news website where you can log on and read news from newspapers, magazines, and blogs based in your area simply by submitting your zip code. It has been under construction for almost a year gathering an amazing team of reporters, about 129 community bloggers, and many fans on both Facebook and Twitter. Now, after its official launch on last month, TBD plans to become the most read news site in Washington DC.

Wanting to bring as much useful information to it’s readers, TBD recently launched a map where people can see any traffic issues on their commute or others destinations. The map identifies city obstacles through the use of crowdsourcing – the citizens and visitors of DC. Anyone can log on to pinpoint a problem on the community map, and they have three ways to do so: Submit it directly to the map, tweet it with the hashtag #tbdwmata, or simply email it to tbdtips@gmail.com. They also have the options to add info, photos, or videos.