Who to put on your Pin My Map (it is not just your best friends)

Most people add the same eight people to Pin My Map on day one: the group chat, a sibling, maybe a parent. Then the map sits there, half empty, and it is hard to see what the fuss is about.

The maps that get genuinely useful are the wider ones. Not because more is better, but because the person who can tell you where to eat in Hanoi is rarely the person you text every day.

Here is who is worth adding, and how to tag them so the map stays yours.

Close friends and family

The obvious ones, and still the most valuable. These are the people whose home base you want to know without thinking, and the ones you would happily share future trips with.

Most people give this tag the widest visibility in Pin My Map and never touch it again.

Workmates, including the ones who left

Work friendships are strange. You see someone every day for three years. They take a job in Amsterdam, and within six months you have no idea what city they are in. A workmates tag holds onto them without making it a big deal.

It is also the tag most people want to keep narrow, and that is exactly the point of having it as its own group. Your colleagues can see your home base and know when you are in town. They do not need to see the wishlist trips you have not told anyone about yet.

Remote teams are the best version of this. If your company is spread across six countries, a workmates tag in Pin My Map turns the next offsite into something you can actually plan around.

People you met while travelling

This is the category Pin My Map was really built for. The two people you shared a hostel kitchen with in Lisbon. The couple you kept bumping into on the same island. Someone you got on with immediately and then never saw again, because the only thing you exchanged was an Instagram handle that went quiet.

Adding them is not a commitment. It is just a way for you both to find out when your paths cross again. Their city, your city, anywhere.

And yes, sometimes that person was a bit more than a nice acquaintance. A holiday that ended too early, two people who live in different countries, and no good way to keep the door open without making it weird. A pin on a map is a low-stakes way to leave it open.

The people who do the thing you do

This is the tag most people have never thought of, and the one that changes how Pin My Map feels.

Make a tag for a hobby rather than a relationship. Surfers. Climbers. People who dance. Anyone who runs. Then, when you are going somewhere, filter your map down to just that tag and see who is nearby.

• Surfers, so you can ask which beach is actually worth the bus ride in November.
• Dancers, so you arrive in a new city already knowing which night is worth going to.
• Climbers, runners, divers, cyclists: anyone whose recommendations are about doing something rather than seeing it.
• Food people, if the friend who researches every restaurant is not the friend you travel with.

These are not people you would necessarily call close friends. That is fine. They are the right people to ask about one specific thing, and a tag is how you find them quickly instead of scrolling your whole map.

The ones who scattered

University friends. The Erasmus year. Anyone from a chapter of your life where everybody was in one place and then, within a year or two, nobody was.

These friendships usually fade for a boring reason rather than a sad one: nobody knows where anybody is any more, so nobody gets in touch. Pin My Map fixes exactly that problem, and it works best when the whole group joins at once.

How to tag without overthinking it

• Start with the four tags Pin My Map gives you: Workmates, Close Friends, Friends, Family. Most people are one of those.
• Add a tag when you catch yourself wanting to ask a specific group of people the same question.
• Tags are private. Nobody can see how you have labelled them, so tag honestly.
• Someone can sit in more than one tag. A workmate who surfs is both.

Once the tags exist, the filters do the work: show me people in Asia Pacific, show me who is travelling in July, show me the surfers. Pin My Map stops being a wall of faces and starts being an answer to a question.

The rule of thumb

Add anyone you would be glad to bump into. That is a much wider group than the people you text every week. It is where almost all the good recommendations and unplanned reunions come from.