Maptia’s storytelling platform is a haven for writers and photographers with wanderlust

Travel is a beautiful. There’s no better way to expand your mind about different cultures and open your eyes to new perspectives than by actually going to places.

But of course, we can’t travel everywhere, and in lieu of that, we rely on the stories people tell us instead. And for those unable to tag along on our adventures, we craft our own stories to tell them.

Maptia is a startup platform that wants to simplify sharing your creative wanderlust though geotagged stories. Last year we called it “Medium meets Facebook for travel” and today it’s launching a completely revamped version 2.0 to make its content more accessible.

Stories are centerstage here. When you first visit the website, you’ll be presented with a collection of trending content from the community’s travelers in addition to a daily featured story chosen by staff.

For more featured content, there’s also a dedicated Editor’s Picks page. As every story is tagged with a location or region it relates to, Maptia is able to create a, well, map pinned with the relevant locations. You can browse it to read about the places and cultures that interest you.

Stories can further be categorized by the ideas they embody or the philanthropic or environmental movements they support in respective ‘Themes’ and ‘Causes’ pages. There’s also a new ‘Places‘ section where users can view all content relating to specific cities, countries or geographic areas in one spot.

The stories themselves are intended to be visually powerful, emphasizing a large header image along with a map overlay of the story’s location. Maptia says additional editing tools are coming soon to further customize the look of your stories, including photo grids and the ability to separate your stories into chapters.

On that note, the company is quick to point out that its platform is far from finished. In particular, its mapping function is still in the very early stages – the company eventually hopes to expand from only pinning featured stories to showcasing all of its content in an upgraded map tool that would simplify content discovery in a visual and interactive manner.

Of course, there are plenty of resources to read about different cultures or share your pictures from around the world, but fewer that target travelers so specifically or make it this easy for them to discover content. If you’re a writer, photographer or anyone with a bit of a travel bug, Maptia could just be the escape you’re looking for.

➤ Maptia