New Yorkers Aaron Rudenstine (left) and Elliot Cohen found a backer in Ashton Kutcher in building Citymaps, an upstart rival to Google and Apple. (NY Post Brian Zak)
A new Big Apple-based social network wants its users to follow each other.
Literally.
Citymaps, which counts Ashton Kutcher among its angel investors, launches today in Apple’s App Store and hopes to woo users from Google and Apple maps by allowing them to share with friends map itineraries for ideas on where to visit.
Co-founded by New Yorkers Elliot Cohen and Aaron Rudenstine, Citymaps built a mobile map from scratch.
The duo hopes to catch fire as maps become more social and grow in value.
“We think it’s as high performing as any map on the market,” Cohen told The Post ahead of today’s release. “We tried to rethink what maps could be and where maps are going: social, personalized and dynamic.”
Citymaps doesn’t yet have Google Street View-style graphics or public transportation routes, but it does have a deep catalog of local businesses across the US.
“Our aim is to show you all the businesses out the gate in the US,” Cohen said. “Nobody has done that really well, figuring out local businesses of the world is quite difficult and it’s something we’ve gotten good at.”
The maps also become more personalized over time, showing places that are most relevant to a specific user.
Citymaps puts Instagram photos and Foursquare comments about the places on the map.
Citymaps already is available on screens in half of New York taxis. With the updated app,Taxi TV will show more neighborhood information such as nearby restaurants.
The tech niche has seen growing interest. Last month Google bought Waze, a social-mapping company, for more than $1 billion. Apple last week bought two map startups.