Where's the damn subway?

An good example of “speaking your target’s language”, which oddly enough is the focus of an HSBC campaign which I enjoy very much: I had been looking for a city map system that had NYC subway stations plotted in it for some time now. Turns out, Yahoo! Maps has this, but was under the label “Public Transportation.”

Now this certainly appropriate and all, but it’s clearly not what a New Yorker is browsing for: we’re looking for “subway,” maybe even “transit system” as a label, especially if that’s all the data you’re providing. (This would be a little different if they showed bus lines as well, but they only provide subway stations.) I love this feature, but I can’t help feeling these labels need to be just as local as Yahoo! Local wishes to be. New York: “Subway”; London: “Tube”; Paris: “Metro” — you get the picture. I don’t envy folks like Yahoo!, that’s a lot of terrain to cover.