SocentVC

Mark, thank you for writing about weeplaces, and Matt, I like the ideas - particularly the filtering options you suggest. I agree with Mark that you would probably find the data more digestible if you were able to use the Zoom funcionality available on our site however your insight is right on.

We built this pretty quickly - and are eager to add the next level of utility to our map as quickly as possible. Hopefully, we can have something out the door quickly - that incorporates some of your thoughts!

If you have more ideas, send them my way: andrew@weeplaces.com

Thanks for the comment, Andrew. Will send you a few additional thoughts as well.

i mean, this is really cool and all Mark (the map is very slick - kudos to the designer), but there's like a lot there. too much for human eyes/minds to absorb and process.

what would be cool is if you could overlay a topography - sort of a combination between a histogram (showing frequency of check in) with the location. as the information is currently visualized, it's extremely tough to get anything other than "mark has been all over manhattan."

can you break it down by category of check in? (work, restaurants, bars, church, gym, residences, etc)

how many average check-ins per day?
what is the average distance between check-ins?
broken down by category of the location?

there's so much data, so to quote a well known sage, "but what does it alllll meeeean?"

Matt, I completely agree with your thoughts. I've kept it intentionally at an aggregate level so as not to reveal all the details of where I've been. Use Weeplaces itself and you'll find it's much more elegant than a single picture will show. I don't think the current service breaks it down by categories or provide other metrics, but Foursquare itself does tell you number of check-ins over the last month, average check-ins when out, % of check-ins at new places, distribution by day of week, etc.