We are 100.000

Manuel Becker in News
25.02.2023 · 1 min read

I can't believe how fast we suddenly grew into such a big community but I am super happy about every single person who gave this platform a try. Thank you!

After working for almost 8.5 years on this platform on a daily basis, I still remember how amazing it felt when the first users joined this journey back in 2014. Every new sign-up felt like a reason to party but also like a commitment for me to deliver the best possible version of this platform to meet each one's expectations. Now there are days when we are growing with up to 500 new users a day and it feels impossible to party this much. ;-)
What I still care a lot about though is to answer each mail you write individually to stay connected with you as much as I can and I am super happy about anybody who says hello via email.

Thank you for being a part of this journey and for all your support. None of this would be possible for me as a solo developer without you and I deeply appreciate it.

What's next?

Last year I became a father for the second time and with less time and sleep, I mainly focussed on improving and extending already existing parts of the platform that I could work on in smaller projects. The huge redesign of the iOS and Android App got a bit out of hand and was much more extensive than planned, but I wanted to finally bring the design and usability to a much higher level than before. All other updates like "Around Anywhere", the removal of all cookies and ads, new and faster image formats, and quite a few bigger redesigns were focussed on making existing parts of the platform even better. It's also the year when Mia started to support me with the content part-time and I still think she is doing an amazing job. We reached almost 20.000 manual spot content improvements and the content is getting better each day, thanks to Mia and everyone who sent us suggestions for changes.

What are your thoughts and is there anything you think I should work on next? My idea list is huge, but I think it's important to revalidate if I'm heading in the right direction or not. So thank you for any requests in the comments below or via email.

Comments (14)

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Björn Hoffmann verified

07.03.2023

Hi Manuel, congratulations to the 100k! Amazing achievement! I am a member for more than seven years now I guess. And I still plan every trip with Locationscout! When you ask for feature requests, more interactivity comes to my mind. I would love to be able to follow other photographers (or spots/locations) to receive notifications when new photos are added. A huge step forward would be some trip or blogging feature, like a blog tool, in which you can combine photos from a trip and arrange them around a map of the trip location. Now, let's go to 1 Million users! :)

Team

Manuel Becker 08.03.2023

Hey Björn, so nice to hear your thoughts about the platform, really appreciate it and fully agree that more interactivity should be possible. I always wanted to implement a feature to follow locations or countries because that would be super nice to plan a trip or maybe even follow photographers, but if I do so I wanted that the following has a real meaning and not just a counter, so I would need to rework the feed. But it's on the todo list. The trip feature is also on the list already but that's definitely a huge one where I might need a bigger team first ;-) What do you think about shared boards? Would that be interesting to plan a trip with somebody else? Yeah, 1 Million sounds so nice, I will do my best :-)

Bernd Stoeckl 27.02.2023

Hi Manuel, great job your site. Pictures load a bit slow here though. I would love to have an option to export the locations into Google directly. Your GPS data have a . here in Safari and it is a bit cumbersome to copy-paste-remove dot.

Bernd Stoeckl 27.02.2023

Just found out I can do on premium so I purchased it. Works

Team

Manuel Becker 27.02.2023

Hey Bernd, thank you very much for your feedback. That dot is marked as "not selectable", not sure why Safari is ignoring this setting. Really seems like Safari is the new Internet Explorer... ;-) Do you want to export the spots into Google Maps because you want to travel there or because you have a list over there? I am asking because I am planning to improve the bookmark boards here as well to make planning a trip with them even better and more efficient. Pictures loading slow: I will check that, sorry for the inconvenience! Thank you as well for supporting this platform via Premium, this means a lot to me!

Bernd Stoeckl 03.03.2023

Hi Manuel, finally I am using Google Maps only for everything. I am traveling with a motorhome and I have several categories showing me Campings, overnight locations, must see places and also photo spots. By this I can see the photo spot and in addition where I can stay overnight with the motorhome and if I need to use my scooter or my bike to access the photo spot. An easy click and open the spot on Google Maps would be fantastic. Best regards Bernd

Mike Weiwers 26.02.2023

Hi Manuel, thank you for this amazing app and congratulations to have 100000 people supporting you. For the next step of the app,it would be nice if I plan a route to see the photo spots near my route or if the app could show me a route to the major photo spots around me, that I then can select.

Team

Manuel Becker 27.02.2023

Hey Mike, thank you very much for your feedback. The "route idea" is something I had as well a few years ago because I thought that this could be really nice as well. I will add some priority to this and check if it's possible to implement that somehow. Showing a route to the major photo spots is already possible with Around Me. It's highlighting the important areas and spots and as soon as you tap on a marker, you will see a route and travel time. And you could even use Around Me right away to place markers along your trip and see in advance which spots are nearby, but that's a bit uncomfortable for longer trips and more meant to use for different places to stay or to check in advance before going somewhere. Please let me know if Around Me (the middle tab in the app) is what you were talking about or if it's missing something. Always happy about any constructive feedback, thank you Mike!!

Mike Weiwers 27.02.2023

I mean, when using Around Me you could select different photospots and then the app generates a roundtrip to these spots.

Team

Manuel Becker 27.02.2023

In general, that's a great idea. When I remember it correctly from my studies almost 20 years ago, this is one of the hardest issues to solve though because the more spots you have, the harder it gets to calculate the perfect route since there are millions of possibilities ;-) But I will definitely think about this part and if there is some kind of solution that could improve planning a trip.

Reinhold Friedrich Auer 26.02.2023

Hi Manuel, congratulation for this great apps. 1. Navigation: Import to Google and/or Waste for optimal navigation to the major location; for local navigation to targets close I would use Localscout, of course. 2. A few tutorials for major functions like how to add a new location, which informations should be there etc. rfa

Team

Manuel Becker 27.02.2023

Hey Reinhold, thank you for your feedback, that helps a lot. I would love to understand why you want to import it to Google Maps. In the app, you can already use the navigation feature to immediately open Google/Apple Maps to navigate to the spot or if available to parking nearby. I learned already that it would be nice to have the navigation feature without having to open a spot, so this will probably come as a feature in the future. Tutorials: Can you tell me what's unclear? I tried to design the spot uploader in a way that you don't have to read a tutorial first and that you can click on "hint" to get tips for each field. If there is something unclear definitely write me because if you have this issue, others will have it as well and I would like to improve this part or make it easier to understand. Wish you a great start to this week and thank you again for the feedback. Manuel

Reinhold Friedrich Auer 27.02.2023

Hi Manuel, 1. Navigation: Since 95% of my targets a far from where I live, I have to plan a voyage for more than one day. Therefore I need to have the selected spots in one map having a good overview where they are. With that I can plan in what order I am going to visit it, etc. An alternatively solution, maybe even better could be: I bookmark all selected spots for a multi-day sessin in localscout and there would be a possibilty to show all bookmarked spots into one map. Another good help would be, to save a bookmark list under a freely selectable title e.g. "Toscana-01 Italy" or "Praque 2023". And it would be possible to retrieve it for future visits. 2. Tutorials: For my oppinion a short YouTube tutorial is more helpful than a writen one. For example "how to upload a location, what data are absolutely required, what data are optional, how to upload a location etc. By the way, for uploading a location, is it necessary to use the premium version? Best regards from CZ

Team

Manuel Becker 27.02.2023

Hey again and thank you for the great feedback. 1) All this is already possible. Just use the bookmark button in the app or here on the website and create a board that you can give whatever name. You can then see all the bookmarks on a board. There is also a map view for just the bookmarks, you need Premium for this though. And with Around Me you can even set a marker to the hotel or place you want to stay and see spots around this area and if you tap one, you can even immediately see how far away it is from the place you stay and how long the trip is. 2) Good point. I never did that because the UI etc. changed a lot over the years. There is the https://www.locationscout.net/guidelines page which explains a lot already I think. And yes, uploading a photo or creating a new spot is entirely free. Premium is just adding a lot of conveniences, making sure you won't miss the important spots, giving you full access to the Learn videos here on the website, and helping me to invest more time into the further development of the platform. All the best wishes to CZ! Manuel

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