Community Map v1 Foundations, Shop Embeds, and New Destinations

This was a stacked sprint. Lots of moving around and working on the go, but a ton of features I’m genuinely excited about shipped. The two biggest ones are the shop map embeds and the new community map layer, which set up the community features I have scoped for December.

🚀 What Shipped

User map visibility v1 as the foundation of the DiveJourney community layer
Embeddable shop maps for dive centers and water businesses
Homepage tag discovery section so more people actually find and use deep filters
Shop account detection and nudges for likely dive shop users
Email notifications when spot updates are approved
New admin analytics for growth, activation, retention, and coverage
12 new destinations across the Caribbean, Atlantic, Pacific, Africa, and Oceania

🌍 Community Foundations

User Map Visibility v1

First version of the community map is live:

You can now see where other DiveJourney members are on a global map view
Locations are privacy aware and act as the base layer for future community features

This is step one toward buddy discovery, events, and more social context as you travel and dive.

🧭 Product Features

Shop Map Embeds

Listed dive shops, centers, and resorts can now:

Embed a DiveJourney map of all their linked spots directly on their own websites
Keep all tagging and other spot details inside the embed, so visitors get a real planning tool rather than a simple pin map

This also lays the groundwork for personal map embeds in the future, so individual divers can host their own DiveJourney map on their site or blog.

Homepage Filter Tag Discovery

A lot of people were not realizing how deep the spot filters go, so I did some work on surfacing that.

The homepage now:

Shows a dedicated spot tag section
Includes curated tag groups as presets, so you can jump straight into themes like shore friendly, big animals, snorkel friendly, wrecks, and more without learning every filter control

This makes it way easier to discover the depth of the database filtering instead of just scrolling the default map.

Spot Update Approval Notifications

Spot updates from the community are coming in fast but until now there was no way to know when your update went live without re-checking the location.

DiveJourney now sends an email when your spot update is approved
You actually know when your changes land instead of editing into a void

This should make contributions feel more rewarding and help keep the map evolving as a living chart, not a static directory.

Shop Detection and Nudges

There are still some free Basic dive shop account slots available.

DiveJourney now flags likely shop accounts based on behavior and profile signals
Those users see nudges on signup to set up shop accounts and are sent to the Dive Shop Account Signup Page or to reach out by email

Goal: move active shops into structured shop accounts so they get the tools, and their shop and linked spots listed on the map.

🏝️ New Destinations

More classic scuba hubs, freedive friendly islands, and cold water coasts now have proper focus points and detailed destinations.

📊 Internal Systems

Admin Analytics

Behind the scenes, new admin analytics views track:

Additional growth metrics
Activation milestones
Retention patterns
Shop health
Coverage and leaderboards

This makes it easier to see which destinations, shops, and features are driving usage to focus future updates.

Another exciting one - started dogfooding PhaseDrift.ai (my other product) on DiveJourney to baseline AI answer visibility and track AI search/chat assistant behavior going forward.

🔭 What’s Next

Build on the user map into real community features: buddy discovery, and potentially events.
Explore building out a leaderboard, with more contributions and logging coming in this could be fun
Expand shop map embeds with early partner shops and learn what works best on their websites
Country listing expansion, much like the destinations listing I'd like to build out country pages with the same level of depth as a resource.
Keep adding destinations and deepening coverage so the map feels global and alive, not just a list of pins

Founder Shiplog #1

Let's Connect

I've had some nice convos with new users through responses to the newsletter - if you want to keep up with what's going on at DiveJourney or connect by email, sign up for the newsletter below.