Yeah. This is showy and really cool. But it seems kind of unnecessary to make it "a map"

In terms of solving real problems, I don't see it as functionally any better than a list ordered by distance with a small compass showing directionality. Basically what you see on the left when you search google maps for "pizza in san francisco".

The benefit of that list is that it uses space much more efficiently and can show things like ratings and thumbnails. Whereas in the article's ui, you have to click on every circle to see what it is.

Put another way, maps are incredibly information dense but when you remove most of the information from them, they're just dense.