SpotCrime Offering High Engagement Crime Maps - For Free!
There are two main categories of crime mapping (or two ends of the scale)
1. Institutional crime mapping - designed for professional analysts with many bells a whistles
2. Public facing crime mapping - designed to get information to public fast.
We at SpotCrime tend to the public facing end of the spectrum. We provide very little analytics - although our city pages do have a basic charts page - http://spotcrime.com/analytics/md/baltimore
What we do focus on is distribution and engagement.
Our distribution in the US is larger than any other crime mapping site on the Internet. We have multiple websites for the public to choose from that are all fast and functional - SpotCrime.com, SpotCrime.info, MyLocalCrime.com, and UCrime.com. With the thought that people register information differently, we’ve created multiple outlets for residents to choose from.
We also provide our maps in more places than just our websites. We deliver over 120k emails a day, that’s over 3.5 million emails sent a month. Each email is tailored to an address and radius specified by the user. And we send an actual crime map with each email - which makes it easier for residents to engage with and forward on the information to friends and family.
We have partnered with over 50 media outlets across the US. These media partners display our local crime maps on their website along with breaking crime news stories to help inform their viewers of crime in their area. In some cities, community watch groups and HOA’s display our maps to help with their neighborhood watch efforts. Other companies, like Trulia - an online residential real estate site, Lifeshield - a home security company, and IDV Solutions - a data software company, integrate SpotCrime on their site to provide crime data to their users to help them make informed decisions. Most recently, we began delivering our maps to Topix.com. With over 7 million visitors a month, our Topix partnership has vastly increased our reach.
We are mobile. Our web pages work so great in a mobile environment that there is almost no need for an app. However, we still offer apps on the iPhone and Android for viewers who prefer an app. We even send crime data via SMS text alerts for users who do not own a smart phone or tablet.
Finally, we can be found on almost any major social media network. On Twitter, we’ve hooked up an RSS feed to tweet real time crime events for individual cities across the US. Our Posterous sites display actual press releases from police departments across the US. You can ‘like’ us on Facebook to learn about major crime stories. Our SpotCrime Blogspot keeps viewers updated on the progress we are making in crime mapping. You can StumpleUpon us and even re-pin us on Pinterest.
With this type of distribution, we’ve estimated 5 to 6 million people engage our data on a monthly basis.
Why push information onto the Internet in every way possible? Because SpotCrime was created by a regular citizen who wanted to know what was happening on his block. Founded and based in Baltimore with arguably one of the highest crime rates in the nation, SpotCrime was designed with the ability and purpose to get information to residents fast and share it fast.
The value of a crime map is not only the information it holds, but the network it engages. Facebook may not have had the best technology when it started out, but it trumped it’s competition because of the sensibility behind connecting with peers, similar to SpotCrime’s ability to reach viewers with crime data.
Finally, because we have a news media model based on advertising, we are incentive to get this information to as many people as fast and as accurate as possible.
1. Institutional crime mapping - designed for professional analysts with many bells a whistles
2. Public facing crime mapping - designed to get information to public fast.
We at SpotCrime tend to the public facing end of the spectrum. We provide very little analytics - although our city pages do have a basic charts page - http://spotcrime.com/analytics/md/baltimore
What we do focus on is distribution and engagement.
Our distribution in the US is larger than any other crime mapping site on the Internet. We have multiple websites for the public to choose from that are all fast and functional - SpotCrime.com, SpotCrime.info, MyLocalCrime.com, and UCrime.com. With the thought that people register information differently, we’ve created multiple outlets for residents to choose from.
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| SpotCrime.info, the newest SpotCrime addition |
We have partnered with over 50 media outlets across the US. These media partners display our local crime maps on their website along with breaking crime news stories to help inform their viewers of crime in their area. In some cities, community watch groups and HOA’s display our maps to help with their neighborhood watch efforts. Other companies, like Trulia - an online residential real estate site, Lifeshield - a home security company, and IDV Solutions - a data software company, integrate SpotCrime on their site to provide crime data to their users to help them make informed decisions. Most recently, we began delivering our maps to Topix.com. With over 7 million visitors a month, our Topix partnership has vastly increased our reach.
We are mobile. Our web pages work so great in a mobile environment that there is almost no need for an app. However, we still offer apps on the iPhone and Android for viewers who prefer an app. We even send crime data via SMS text alerts for users who do not own a smart phone or tablet.
Finally, we can be found on almost any major social media network. On Twitter, we’ve hooked up an RSS feed to tweet real time crime events for individual cities across the US. Our Posterous sites display actual press releases from police departments across the US. You can ‘like’ us on Facebook to learn about major crime stories. Our SpotCrime Blogspot keeps viewers updated on the progress we are making in crime mapping. You can StumpleUpon us and even re-pin us on Pinterest.
With this type of distribution, we’ve estimated 5 to 6 million people engage our data on a monthly basis.
Why push information onto the Internet in every way possible? Because SpotCrime was created by a regular citizen who wanted to know what was happening on his block. Founded and based in Baltimore with arguably one of the highest crime rates in the nation, SpotCrime was designed with the ability and purpose to get information to residents fast and share it fast.
The value of a crime map is not only the information it holds, but the network it engages. Facebook may not have had the best technology when it started out, but it trumped it’s competition because of the sensibility behind connecting with peers, similar to SpotCrime’s ability to reach viewers with crime data.
Finally, because we have a news media model based on advertising, we are incentive to get this information to as many people as fast and as accurate as possible.
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