Dopplr Raumzeitgeist 2007: Where we went last year
UPDATE: You can now buy a poster of the Dopplr Raumzeitgeist 2007 from ImageKind.
While we’re busy working on new stuff for 2008, we thought it would be fun to look back at the first year of Dopplr in our inaugural “Raumzeitgeist” round-up.
Zeitgeist of course means “Spirit of the times”. You’re probably familiar with Google’s wonderful ‘zeitgeist’ report they publish annually, reflecting culture in what people were searching for that year.
“Raumzeitgeist” translates literally as “Space Time Spirit” and that’s precisely what we’ve got here. It’s about where we, the users of Dopplr, travelled through space and time on our little planet last year…
In 2007:
Dopplr travellers lived in 172 different countries (4310 cities), and visited 201 different countries (6088 cities).
52% of trips were within the same country. As you might expect, the top ten trips within the same country were all in the USA.
The average Dopplr trip was 5682 miles (each way – so if they were all round-trips the average total travel per trip was double that).
As you can see from the graph below – this average trip length results from the ‘double-hump’ displayed, where there are peaks in the 1000-2000 mile trip range and the longer-haul, 9000-10000 mile range.
The top ten trips were:
- London to Paris
- San Francisco to New York
- Helsinki to London
- London to New York
- San Francisco to Los Angeles
- New York to San Francisco
- Boston to New York
- Los Angeles to San Francisco
- London to Amsterdam
- London to San Francisco
The top ten destination countries were:
- USA
- Great Britain
- Germany
- France
- Spain
- Italy
- Canada
- Netherlands
- Sweden
- Finland
And the image at the very top of this post?
That’s a picture of Earth in 2007 as plotted by Dopplr’s travellers.
When we generated the mapping of it (and many thanks to Aaron for his help in doing so) we were stunned by the coverage – there is perhaps some all-too-predictable density and sparseness but the resemblance to NASA’s image of the earth at night inspired me to create the above graphic, summing up 2007’s Dopplr Raumzeitgeist.
Where next in 2008?
——
P.s…
There’ll be more on the data, how we generated it and your chance to get your hands on it in order to make your own visualisations – in my next blog post.
Be good to look at the mode and median of miles traveled [rather than mean] to get around the skew toward v v long distance trips. Can you tell us that?
Also, I suspect that people tend to document their more significant trips [i.e. long distance / long time]. Can you look at only intra country trips and munge some stats around that? By comparing that with the full international stats you’d be able to ascertain what ’significant’ means then in terms of travel, for who and if it differs by country at all. I think.
Fabulous report and great work on the info viz, can i have a poster made with that?
Jamesb,
The median trip distance was 5430 miles. I’ll see what else we can dig out for you.
[...] & How We Travel Dopplr (a social networking site for travelers) has just released data from their first year with some interesting infonuggets about the year in travels, including a socially-generated map of [...]
Aren’t the distances skewed since the users are likely to be heavy travelers in the first place?
[...] [via: dopplr] [...]
So, how many miles did we travel? And how much would the carbon offsets cost? ;)
[...] Dopplr Raumzeitgeist 2007: Where we went last year [...]
Now if someone could put that data into Agora to get some interactive map of the interdependencies between cities that would be awesome!
See the Agora website for details or try an example based on the Web of Trust of Apache.
(In the applet: select one or more datasets, click “Load”, then click “Start” and drag around the dots…)
i’d be interested in knowing how many connected travelers found themselves at the same location at the same time (neither at home) and compare that to the people from the entire dopplr network who found themselves at the same location at the same time (neither at home).
you’d get an idea of missed and possible connections.
That’s the kind of stats that makes this service even greater. Thanks for sharing the information. Some stats option that only handles our network data could be a good improvement for the future.
[...] Mapa de viajeros en Dopplr el año pasado [...]
Awesome. That’s all. : . )
Hello Dopplr,
I love the map except for one small thing – why does the Southern Hemisphere have to be dark and the Northern light?
Can we have a bit more light please?
Nick
(Down under in the dark)
You know those little maps people put up on their blogs showing visitors? This map above looks just like those maps.
http://whos.amung.us/show/tbq84itw
Not a great deal of difference. What exactly is being mapped here? I’d say more likely it is a map of technology density more than travel destinations.
[...] Nice map from Dopplr showing all the places their users went over the last year, plus some stats on most popular flights, etc. [...]
Hi,
Please tell me if Bangalore figured in your map as a destination or a point of origin. I am a reporter based in Bangalore – filing a story on Dopplr.
Cheers
Max
Max,
Out of the 6,088 cities visited by Dopplr travellers, Bangalore was the 72nd most popular city to visit — placing it in the top 2%.
Hmm.. I wonder which cities i have to travel to, so that it spells my name on the map next year. I reckon Siberia might be the right area, lots of free space. A lot of work, i better get to it!
Good stuff!
> And the image at the very top of this post?
> That’s a picture of Earth in 2007 as plotted by Dopplr’s travellers.
Do the points represent Dopplr’s travellers’ home city, or do they represent each city travelled to?
[...] Where we went last year: Dopplr Raumzeitgeist 2007 [...]
I would be interested in the qualitative data rather than the pure stats. so how many people actually met, was it business, catching up with a friend, other…
and I think it would be great to get more inter-city data info. I found it an interesting figure to see that helsinki – london ranks third, but on the other hand spain is 5th as country destination but Barcelona does not show up on the city trips.
I still haven’t figured out how to get in touch with people from my home town via dopplr …
great work !
It will be fun to see that map in a few years time. I wonder which of those empty continents will fill up fastest. My money’s on Africa.
great ;)
Hi.
For me as a German the word “RAUMZEITGEIST” that You have choosen is not really correct. In the German language it is possible to build new words just by adding them together. But normally we would write it in the following way: Raum-Zeit-Geist
Otherwise the meaning for “Zeitgeist” and the meaning for “Raum” in the sence of Dopplr can not be combined, because it makes no sence. the word “Raum” is used in archtectural meaning and not in travelling.
More correct combinations could be:
- Reise-Zeit-Geist or better: Reise-Zeitgeist (this means Zeitgeist plus travelling)
- Welt-Zeitgeist (Welt means world, like world wide)
Maybe this will start a little discussion.
From Aachen
Frank Lube
[...] schöner Zeitgeist, der von Dopplr da veröffentlicht wurde und wieder ein schönes Beispiel für die Macht der [...]
“What exactly is being mapped here? I’d say more likely it is a map of technology density more than travel destinations.”
..good point, doug rogers.
Again, history is being documented (and therefore written) by those who can. The rest of the page is very informative though.
[...] post by Dopplr Blog » News, discussion and design chat about Dopplr and sponsored by Jamaica Travel Guide Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites [...]
Hmmm. Looks like Canada isn’t the most sought-after destination. Maybe I’m just reading the map incorrectly.
I really wish you could add past trips. I think that would inspire me to stay on the site so much more.
Also, is there any consideration to open social development.
[...] Dopplr Blog » Dopplr Raumzeitgeist 2007: Where we went last year london to paris is the most popular travel route. would not have guessed that. (tags: dopplr) [...]
Dopplr Raumzeitgeist 2007: Where we went last year…
Dopplr hat mit Dopplr Raumzeitgeist eine Grafik veröffentlich die anzeigt welche Plätze der Welt in 2007 bereist wurden….
Matt, It would be great to retroactively align past trips (2007 or beyond– I joined after I’d made a CO2 footprint commitment which I’ve kept to so far). I recently had to compile all dates for international travel for the past 4 years. Also tracking and correlating the mode of travel, then exposing it via XML would help my work on emerging criteria, CO2 calculation and offsets for social nets. Data I’ve already entered into the ‘Cities I’ve Visited’ group application of Trip Advisor (which like Dopplr, is on Facebook), currently has no date, distance, car/plane/train type (maybe that is available at some other W2.0 app/site) so but would be useful with Dopplr. Similarly, as ScottH in 7. mentioned above, being able to compare travel time/space ‘near misses’ between friends/groups as the user base grows, would add all sorts of buzz especailly with Geomatic apps supported by realtime GPS service plotting (so geeky, but fun). Dopplr could help support these emerging functions, while its largley early adopter tech/knowledge workers membership base expands. Analyzing our past travel…to help inform our future… use of ‘travel’ energy is a challenge Dopplr should support. All things to think about. regards
[...] Dopplr Blog » Dopplr Raumzeitgeist 2007: Where we went last year – le destinazioni degli utenti di dopplr nel 2007 [...]
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[...] on a plane, ever wonder where your fellow travellers are headed to? Well, wonder no more. Dopplr is a social networking site and online tool for travellers, weary or otherwise. It’s been [...]
[...] celebrate one year of Dopplr, the team created this Raumzeitgeist 2007 round-up. This kind of ’space time spirit’ as they call it, shows where and how long people [...]
[...] Thanks for visiting!A little while back, one of my favorite Web 2.0 apps, Dopplr, published their Dopplr Raumzeitgeist 2007 [...]
[...] they published a Raumzeitgeist (musing on Google’s Zeitgeist) which is a — rather basic — analysis of collected [...]
Have you ever come across Plog’s Model?
See the below article, especially page 2:
http://www.allbusiness.com/accommodation-food-services/1189046-1.html
Would be interesting to link Dopplr’s stats with some academic research like that.
[...] year we created something we called the Dopplr Raumzeitgeist Map – a socially-generated map of the Earth created by the travels of Dopplr users in 2007. We updated [...]
Matt, It would be great to retroactively align past trips (2007 or beyond– I joined after I’d made a CO2 footprint commitment which I’ve kept to so far). I recently had to compile all dates for international travel for the past 4 years. Also tracking and correlating the mode of travel, then exposing it via XML would help my work on emerging criteria, CO2 calculation and offsets for social nets.
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ruthallen