The End of Google Maps Lists

The Beginning of Spotify Playlists…but for Places…

Aug 20, 2025

Hey everyone,

No. Google maps lists are not shutting down (yet)…But the new Satlantis release has dropped and it’s the beginning of something massive:

Collections V1.0 is live!

Everything we’ve been building for the last 12+ months has led to this:

A powerful map for both web & mobile
The ‘suggest merchant’ flow
The AI-powered pipelines to auto-populate suggested merchants
Super-robust Interests tagging for every place
Google & OSM integrations
Image-centric design that gives you everything you need to know about a place in a single, visually dense square

Today I’ll shift away from the usual format to explain Collections and why I think it’s a killer feature that has the potential to go viral.

Let’s dive in…

A Concept Whose Time Has Come

In simple terms, Collections are bookmarks. Just way cooler.

Instagram, X and most socials have bookmarks, but they’re boring, basic & hidden. Satlantis collections actually work more like Spotify or YouTube playlists do for media, or Pinterest does for images. Those apps allow you to add items into a list or folder which is easily organised, themed & named, and can be either private or public and shareable so you can share your taste with friends or the world.

In the case of Satlantis, Collections are like playlists or moodboards, but applied to places on a map.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Google Maps lists already do that…” But actually: No, they don’t! They should, but their lists feature is not social and their MyMaps feature (which they no longer support) is a mess.

To begin with, adding places to a list on Google just adds a bunch of pins on an already noisy map. You can’t differentiate between lists on the map so after a few years, you get a million and one pins on there, devoid of context, which you will never go back — even to clean up. In other words, the more you use it, the less useful it becomes. That’s a big problem.

How about sharing…You can share your Google lists with others, sure; but where? Whatever added value you get from sharing the list, you get it outside of Google Maps… Google Maps itself offers no social experience and no incentive for curators to share their work, because once shared, the list you put so much work into is just added to the sea of pins on someone else’s map.

Compare this to Spotify playlists, where the most shared and listened to playlists can be saved and become trendy very quickly, or Pinterest where the best collections are more discoverable and curators are attributed. These are proper social integrations for lists, and this is what we’ve modeled the experience at Satlantis on. Only for places on a map.

Considering it’s 2025, it’s about time someone sorted this out…

So now… let’s explore what you can do with Collections.

Maps meet Moodboards

You can save your favourite places and organise them neatly into folders — or Collections — which are visible on your profile, and if made public, are shareable with the world, whether in-app or outside of the app.

Here’s some ideas:

Say you live in Barcelona and have had enough of friends & visitors always asking you “where do I go for coffee / tapas / jamon / whatever”. You can create a ‘Barcelona in 3 days’ Collection and just share that with them. You could also make another called ‘Barcelona in 1 month’ or ‘Moving to Barcelona’ or ‘Best Tapas in Barcelona.’

Here’s my “Floripa Starter Pack” to give you a sense of what I mean.

https://www.satlantis.io/collection/3/floripa-starter-pack

Perhaps you’re really into saunas and you’ve been to the best ones around the world. You can create the ultimate ‘World’s best saunas’ Collection for all your followers on Satlantis to see, and you can share it with your audience on other socials.

Or maybe you’re a Bitcoiner like me and want to spend sats. I personally hate it when places are marked as “accepts Bitcoin” on BTCMaps for example, but when I go there, the POS terminal is hidden away and the staff look at me with blank stares. Collections fixes this. I can’t wait to see people create collections like “Verified BTC merchants in Barcelona” so when I’m there, I know which ones to actually go to.

One other cool use case I’m sure we’ll see is event organizers creating their own event-related Collection so they can easily point their attendees to local places they recommend. Imagine the official BTC Prague ‘Welcome Guide’ Collection on Satlantis! In fact don’t imagine it: I’ll make sure that’s a thing next year ;)

This is a game changer not only for travelers, but for everyone else who has ever tried to carefully curate a list of places and felt like that effort was wasted.

A New Age for Curators & Tastemakers

Collections allow you to do a bunch of things:

Organise your lists into folders, which you can use for itineraries, or for trip planning with your spouse or a group of friends for example (collaborative collections coming soon).
Showcase your taste and earn status by becoming a reputable tastemaker & curator.
Create easily shareable lists for your friends, visitors, event attendees, guests, private communities, etc.
Build and neatly organise private, personal or public travel logs so you can keep track of all the interesting places you’ve been to.

I’m excited about all of these use cases, but especially #2. There are so many great curators out there who really know the best places but they’re drowned out by marketers who are good at Instagram content, but have zero taste and just show you the same “top 10” cafes in Bali.

I want to see real curators flourish, and I want to enhance discoverability for them.

One way we’ll do that is through the interest graph we built. Every place on Satlantis is tagged with attributes (eg: Seed Oil Free, Carnivore, Laptop Friendly, Bitcoin Accepted, Chill, Upscale, etc), so collections are automatically also tagged & weighted. Because users tell the app what they’re interested in when they sign up to Satlantis (also by which places they collect themselves), they will naturally discover collections that are of interest to them on our new discovery page (coming soon — see below).

So for curators that means people you haven’t connected with yet might discover your profile by seeing your Sauna, Barcelona, Steakhouse, Seed Oil Free, etc Collection on the discovery tab. It’s a great way to grow an audience not through only content creation, but curation.

This is what Google lists could be if it (a) looked nice and (b) had awesome curation features and © had a social graph tied to it. But that’s unlikely to happen. Which is why I can confidently say that, at least for curators: The days of static Google lists are over.

I look forward to seeing curators & tastemakers craft beautiful and useful Collections in the coming weeks, months and years as we make this feature more performant.

The Map View

Unlike Google Maps, when you tap on the map view in a collection, you only see what’s in the collection — not the million other pins you have saved.

This removes all the noise from the map so you only see what you care about. Also, as a curator, you can offer people a really clean view of your Collections and the portion of the map they cover in a way no other app has really achieved. See the map view for my “Floripa Starter Pack” below:

Monetisation

Yes, we are planning to roll out our own Lightning wallet so that just like on any other Nostr client, you’ll be able to pay, receive and zap sats. But…we’re taking it a step further.

Beyond just zapping posts — you will of course be able to zap Collections — a tip in exchange for the value you got out of it — once we implement Limited access Collections (these can be invite-only, but also paywalled), creators will have a uniquely powerful tool to monetise their curation and tastemaking.

Imagine you have a bunch of free collections which are open to the public. With these you build credibility. But…you might also have a couple of really, really, really good collections that are for your community only, in which case: “Unlock for Sats”

Enough said.

This is a big deal for two reasons:

First, no one else out there offers such access control for places lists
Second, we’ll unlock new pathways to monetisation… in Bitcoin.

Once we give tastemakers an avenue to monetise the content they craft, and earn in the best money in the world, it willstart to attract curators from all over the world. IMO — this is a truly novel use case for zaps because it rewards another kind of PoW. I look forward to seeing people experiment with it.

Create with Your First Collection!

Now it’s time for you to try it out.

Collections are both easy to create and even easier to share. If you haven’t yet, download Satlantis now, create your profile and then follow these steps:

Go to your profile and navigate to the Collections tab.
If you’ve never created a Collection or saved one from another creator, you will see a screen prompting you to create your first one. Tap the ‘Create Collection’ button.
Choose a name, add a short description and upload a cover for your Collection. This last step is optional but highly recommended: your Collections tab will look so much better.
Finally, choose whether you want this Collection to be Public or Private. We will soon add more options such as Limited (invite-only or paid Collections) and Shared (collaborate with other creators on a Collection).
Once you’re ready, tap ‘Create.’ You will be redirected to your Collections tab — which is where they live — but your first Collection will still be empty.
Start populating it by tapping the Bookmark button on any merchant and adding them to your new Collection. (If you can’t find the merchant you’re looking for you can suggest it and we’ll add it overnight with a complete profile).
Alternatively, you can create a Collection directly from the merchant view, by tapping the Bookmark button and following the instructions (this is actually faster).

When you’re done, share your newly created Collection to your feed and tag me so I can see it boost it. Or you can share it with me here in the comments or by reply email and I’ll go check it out!

Coming Soon: Collect Everything

We’ve only just scratched the surface of what Collections allows. There’s much more to look forward to. Before I wrap up, here’s a quick summary of what’s coming:

Collaborative Collections: as the name suggests, create collections with other people
Better Access Control: we’ll expand the current access options to include Limited Collections, whether invite-only, community-accessible or paywalled.
Collect everything: you’ll be able to add people, events, images, videos and any other Satlantis content alongside places.
Discovery tab: this will make Satlantis the “Spotify for places”. A live, dynamic discovery experience for place and collections based on your interests & who you follow.
AI-Powered Smart Collections: if Collections are like playlists, Smart Collections will be like Apple’s Genius recommendations. We will use AI to auto-generate Collections tailored to your taste & interests, giving you a head start on your journey.

This is such a cool feature, which is made even better by integrating your social graph with it. In time, it is going to redefine how we discover places around the world.

I’m genuinely excited for you all to give this a try.

On behalf of myself & the team, thank you for reading & I’ll see you on the next update.