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Sep 12, 05BlogFlux MapStats
Visitor statistics and Google maps to display latest visitors.
Link: BlogFlux MapStats
Also see: eHub Interviews MapStats
eHub Interviews MapStats
Thanks to Ahmed Farooq, creator of MapStats for this email interview posted October 12, 2005.
eHub: What is your web application/service about?
MapStats: We have two primary AJAX applications on Blog Flux. Firstly is MapStats, which integrates the Google Maps API with a full-featured stat tracker. The other is our Pinger, which performs blog pings using AJAX.
eHub: Why did you start this project?
MapStats: MapStats is about humanizing your visitors. Stat trackers in general just spew out a lot of data - people are searching for X phrase, visiting Y page, etc. With MapStats you can see where these users are. From a marketing perspective, it can help you figure out where your audience is, what they are looking at, how they are finding you, and so forth. It brings geo-location goodness to your fingertips.
eHub: How much time do you devote to its growth? Do you have a day job?
MapStats: There were two of us that developed MapStats. We spent a lot of time on the conceptualization of the project (as we do not place a limit on log-file size, we had to make sure our system could scale very well). So while one of coworkers (Andre) worked on the actual logging mechanism, I slaved away at the front end, graphing, and promotion. Blog Flux is owned by Enthropia Inc, which is my day job.
eHub: How large is your team and what are your backgrounds?
MapStats: There are two of us that worked on MapStats, and a third that worked on our Pinger. I myself created Enthropia Inc over 5 years ago, an am a computer engineer by degree. Andre is a graduate. Munzir, who did the Pinger, is the lead web developer for our Evo-Dev (www.evo-dev.com) software division.
eHub: What is your design philosophy?
MapStats: Our focus has always been two-fold: usability (we use all our products ourselves, including MapStats and Pinger) and scalability. For usability, we always test on our mothers and our non-techie friends (rest assured, no animals were hurt!). There are numerous ways we go about testing scability. The one question we do ask ourselves - could we survive a slashdotting?
eHub: What technologies are you currently using?
MapStats: We all make extensive use of the PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript. I do want to take the time to note that too many people are hungup on using a database - in many cases directly reading and writing files can be a far superior solution!
eHub: If your project is live, what are the most requested features from your users/community?
MapStats: The most requested feature for MapStats is the ability to put the actual map on their website. Unfortunately that is not do-able!
eHub: Does your user base reside in a primary geographic location or is it distributed?
MapStats: Our user base is the entire blogosphere, and they reside everywhere. From current use I can say that our two biggest users are Americans and Chinese.
eHub: Where do you see the project heading in the next 6 months? The next 2 years?
MapStats: Making it more intuitive. We are sitting on a fair bit of data (tracking roughly 800,000 unique visitors per day). As the data accumulates over months (and even years), we want to extend the statistics to become more ‘intelligent’. As an example, specify ‘Christmas season, North America, East Coast’ and instantly you can find out what posts were the most popular, what search phrases were the most popular, and so forth.
I do want to take a moment and say we take privacy *very* seriously. I hate spammers and wish I could slap them around with a hammer. Any data we collect will never be sold to marketers. The abovementioned example would be only available to the site publisher him or herself.
eHub: What is the greatest challenge to your success?
MapStats: Recognition really. Blog Flux is an attempt to have all the services you need in one place - no need to go to site X to ping, site Y for stats, and site Z for subscription. It is all in one place, making a blogger’s job easier.
eHub: What is the one thing you need to get to the next phase of the project?
MapStats: More blogs in our directory! Right now we have ~3250. With our tag-based approach, we only become more useful with more blogs. As another example, we use some algorithms to determine ‘related’ blogs to one another. The more blogs we have, the more on-topic these related blogs will be.
eHub: Do you have a business model? If so, what is it?
MapStats: Let’s just say that Enthropia Inc is firmly in the black.
eHub: If you’re able to disclose this information, how much traffic or usage do you see on an average day?
MapStats: We are still new and as of right now we get roughly 2000 unique visitors per day. We do have some interesting stats available here: http://dir.blogflux.com/stats/
eHub: What is the one thing you’re most proud of about the project?
MapStats: Getting comments and email about how much they love MapStats. An ego thing, but really, it rocks!
eHub: How would you describe the shift that’s occurring with the web right now to future generations?
MapStats: I’m not going to answer that for at least another year :). There is a lot of hype right now, so it remains to be seen how many practical applications emerge. One thing I can say is that it is finally making the web live up to its interactive promise.
eHub: What site(s) do you visit everyday other than your own?
MapStats: Ugh too many! Favorites include digg, traffick, and problogger.
eHub: How many hours of sleep do you get a night?
MapStats: Ooh - on weekdays, around 4 hours. On weekends, I aim for 8 :)
Thanks to Ahmed Farooq, creator of MapStats for this email interview posted October 12, 2005.
Posted by Emily Chang in Blogging • Geotracking and mapping
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Emily Chang is an award-winning strategic designer and co-founder and principal of Ideacodes.com, a web consultancy in San Francisco that focuses on the design and user experience of next generation websites, social applications and networked communities. Learn more...
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