Once impenetrable, Google Maps scales walls of NYC’s Gramercy Park

For 183 years, the guardians of New York City’s Gramercy Park have successfully kept it closed to the public, and only those living around the private park are granted access. And since commercial photography on park grounds is forbidden, few have truly seen what the inside of the park looks like – until now. As a consequence of today’s technology, The New York Times reports that now anyone can virtually wander beyond the park’s fences, all thanks to Airbnb, a smartphone, and Google Maps.

No, it’s not because the gatekeepers of Gramercy Park have decided to give people a glimpse of this fortress of a garden through the Internet – photography is still off limits. The 360-degree panorama view on Google Maps were created with the good fortune bestowed onto Shawn Christopher, a computer programmer who visited New York City on his honeymoon in May.

Related: Google intros new-look Maps for mobile, plus Uber and OpenTable integration

Christopher had rented a room in a Gramercy Park apartment via Airbnb, which included access to the famed park. Realizing he had been given the key to a place not even Robert De Niro or Woody Allen were able to shoot in, Christopher used the Photo Sphere app from Google on his smartphone to document the park, which were then uploaded to Google Maps.

“The Internet is all about sharing knowledge, especially these secret, hidden things,” Christopher told the Times.

Despite having its walls now breached on the Internet, don’t expect the park to be opened up to the public. But Arlene Harrison, the park’s chief steward, told the Times that with smartphones and other technology, there was only so much the park’s trustees could now do to keep it entirely private. Harrison also said that she has no plans to ask Google to remove the images, although Google said it would take them down if asked.

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How Registration Walls and PDFs can make your Marketing Less Effective

I had an interesting exchange with a client this morning. They hoped I could help foster a conversation about some issues germane to their market. But I couldn’t. Here is the email I sent back:

Text is the language of the Net. It’s the language of blogs. Many of the people I interact with really don’t like PDFs- you often see people apologise when they do [PDF alert!]
If you want influencers to engage with your ideas I think you need to do so on the strength of blogs, rather than PDFs.
As an influencer, I know you would like me to help drive traffic, and a conversation, around your thought pieces – but that needs to be in the “right” format. Otherwise, frankly, I wouldn’t want to point my network at it.
As you can see this is something I feel pretty strongly about. I know traditional marketing has a firewall, where you enter your details to download a “free white paper” in PDF form, then you have a sales person call them up afterwards – it’s all about the “funnel”.
But tech marketing is today is more about driving conversations, in my opinion.

The client came back and said they would consider a “plain text” layout for print, but the registration wall was important, not for sales purposes, but to know who was reading their piece.
But I can’t, or won’t, point my community at a registration wall. That’s a barrier to entry we mostly refuse to jump. If you want to appeal to traditional IT buyers the Reg Wall, PDF white white paper combo might work. But not for next gen influencers and people that live in the cloud.
disclosure: I should point out that I wouldn’t engage with an idea I didn’t find interesting and on topic, and I would as ever disclose any client-related work I was doing.

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