Host Globally, Build Communities Locally

When I was first hired by EV1Servers, I sent then-CEO Robert Marsh a loooong wish list for internal apps. One item near the top was a dynamic customer map. If I were going to a conference in Chicago or visiting friends in Portland, wouldn't it be cool to find out which major customers are nearby? If 50 companies from a certain city lease 1000 total servers from EV1, shouldn't we fly out there to meet with these folks - and see if they have contacts who might be interested in our services?

There was no Google Maps API back then, so building such a tool didn't seem feasible. But now that there's a Flickr layer and a Wikipedia layer on Google Earth (I read about those in this O'Reilly Radar post) and map mashups for everything from apartment rents to handmade jewelry, why not do the same for your customer base?

You could use an internal map that shows customer count, server count, support ticket volume, recent orders and cancellations... by location. In addition to identifying sales opportunities, the map could also help set content localization priorities. If customers in China seem to submit an unusual number of tickets for very basic issues, maybe they'd appreciate a Chinese FAQ.

More interestingly, you could offer customers the (optional, of course) ability to put themselves on a public map. For instance, Etsy, an arts and crafts marketplace, has a geolocator where buyers can find local sellers. Your customer map could have an ecommerce layer for retailers, a web services layer for developers and designers, a local vendors layer for doctors, lawyers and plumbers...

I'm guessing there are hundreds - if not thousands - of GoDaddy and 1&1 and DreamHost and BlueHost customers in just about any major city. It costs very little to encourage these companies to do business with one another, but hosting providers could earn major brownie points (and longer-lasting customers relationships) by facilitating these connections.

PS - On a totally unrelated note, I just read on Wired that there's a Santa tracking layer on Google Earth.