In an effort to promote the Web 2.0 Summit taking place November 15-17 in San Francisco, this interactive map has been created which shows web companies and brands represented as countries.
You can pan and zoom to explore the map or click the company icons to see arrows pointing to markets (continents) that the companies are trying to expand into (colonize). In addition, you can discuss the map with others and add your own ideas by turning on the comments view. If you’d like more information, John Battelle has posted an in-depth study entitled “Points of Control: The Map” on the Web 2.0 Summit blog, which deals with the creation of the map, and his hope that future users will add to it.
We’ve put the entire map under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means we want you to take this idea and add to it, making it better. Once our amazing development partners at Blend Interactive catch their breath, we also plan to release the code and documentation, so you can create your own maps as well.
Our thanks to the team at Blend who worked with me to bring this vision to reality, and to Janetti Chon, my producer, who kept it on track, and the entire team at Web 2.0 for bearing with us as we brought this first iteration to fruition.
You can check out the interactive map by clicking the link below.
