I’m a big fan of cool startups that are smart, interesting ideas targetting niches where others generally don’t play or haven’t figured out yet. Check out Spotcrime – http://www.spotcrime.com.
It layers up-to-the-hour crime incident data on top of Google Maps – originally started in Baltimore and now in NYC (with national rollout in the works, I’m sure). Cartoony icons depict where the crime occurred, and mouse-over reveals details about the actual crime (e.g., customer arrested for throwing sandwich at store clerk).
Revenue from Adsense ads up top – high CPC payout, but hard to imagine good clickthru rate. Most of the ads I’m seeing are aimed at the “bad guys” – clearing their records, hiring attorneys, etc. I can’t imagine many of them being early adopters in the high-tech crowd (what with being on the run and all)…I also can’t imagine their being a very large audience of these people in need of the Adsense-provided services. Other revenue streams are to come, I’m sure…or much better targeting (e.g., ads to join the police force/fire academy, sponsorship deals with local media/tv, etc)
Liability would be another issue…don’t even know where/how they’d start to manage that one.
Filed under: Uncategorized
