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TMAP, South Korea's leading map and navigation application, is launching a short-form video service covering travel, restaurants and driving. The company aims to become a "mobility life platform" that combines its vast trove of movement data with a range of services to encompass activities before and after travel.
TMAP Mobility held a press briefing in Jung-gu, Seoul, on the 9th, announcing that it will unveil "TMAP Short-Form" next week. The service allows users to record and share the places they have visited as short videos within the TMAP app. A distinctive feature is that up to 10 places, linked to the TMAP map, can be tagged in a single video. Jeon Chang-geun, TMAP's Chief Product Officer (CPO), explained, "On other social networking services (SNS), even if a short-form video sparked interest in a specific place, users had to switch to another map app to find it," adding, "Providing this process seamlessly is what sets TMAP Short-Form apart."
TMAP Short-Form content is organized into three categories: places, driving and lifestyle. The places category offers information on restaurants, cafes and bakeries, and travel and activities, while the driving category features tips for novice drivers, vehicle maintenance advice, and dashcam footage of accident cases. The lifestyle category will provide shopping information, practical everyday tips and humorous content.
TMAP has secured about several thousand creators in advance so that users can watch a variety of short-form videos right after the service launches. General users can also freely upload videos. Park Yun-ho, TMAP Mobility's Intelligence Leader, said, "We expect users to comfortably access the TMAP app, encounter place information while enjoying short-form videos, and naturally move to those places," adding, "Since activities such as writing reviews, saving, and posting short-form videos are recorded on the user's profile screen, (short-form) will serve as a stepping stone for TMAP's expansion into a 'user experience service.'"
The launch of the short-form service is an extension of TMAP's efforts to build a mobility life platform by adding various services. Starting with the launch of the place recommendation service "Where to Go" in 2024, TMAP unveiled "Menu Search," which allows users to search for restaurants serving specific dishes, and "AI Hashtag Review," which uses AI to analyze reviews and summarize them into key keywords, the following year. "Where to Go" currently has around 4.5 million monthly active users (MAU). This year, the company reorganized its home screen to center on the map in order to strengthen its identity as a map service.
TMAP also plans to enhance its agent services based on data from its 15.5 million monthly users and artificial intelligence (AI) technology. It is preparing a conversational agent that recommends travel and travel routes based on movement information, as well as an in-vehicle voice agent. Jeon said, "The core of agent search, especially place search, is content and data," emphasizing, "Because TMAP holds vast user experience data within its app, it can provide rich search results."
