Janet Haven

Don't I know you from somewhere?

Seems that the geolocation fun is not going to stop anytime soon. This morning I came across ClustrMaps (beta), a service which maps the visitors to your website. You get a little thumbnail map of world (like the one at right), which clicks through to a bigger map on ClustrMaps' servers; you can also zoom into continent level on the big map. At a glance, you can see the geographical distribution of your readers. Neat-o. The problem right now, as you can see with the image at right, is that a site with frequent visitors from around the world quickly becomes a big red blob in the thumbnail. I'm sure they're sort that out post-beta, though.

The reason I like this tool is because of its useful application to civil society networks. One of the advantages of using onling tools to organize advocacy campaigns is encouraging a sense of broad solidarity around an issue, be it land mine bans, tobacco control, or anti-corruption. More and more international advocacy movements are trying to find ways to demonstrate their reach to their existing constituency, to policy-makers, and to funders who support their work. Simple tools like ClustrMaps provide an un-scientific but still compelling visual for an advocacy site looking to demonstrate its global appeal.

ClustrMaps is free for sites with fewer than 1000 visitors a day, and the company provides a premium product for those with higher traffic.