MixMap MySpace Tracking

Well, once again, there has been a surge in the number of MySpace trackers as of late, and one of the biggest contenders in the ring has been MixMap. It's a pretty novel concept- you create a profile, and it will track your visitors using pins on a virtual map (default uses Yahoo! maps I do believe.) MixMap tracks the time the visitors visit, their IP, and will list their MixMap username if they have an account. If the visitor does not have an account, it will list them as an anonymous user.

Today I decided to try MixMap out, seeing it rising in popularity and hearing some things about it. I created an account, created a map and requested that a friend of mine view my profile. The time I viewed my profile was listed, and his was listed after he viewed. I know where my friend lives, so I figured I'd check the map out and see if it was accurate. It was in the range of five miles off. I was puzzled. I took a look at mine. My pinpoint was over a mile off. I decided that I'd create another MixMap account and associate with it a different MySpace profile of mine, for two reasons. First, I'd see if the pinpoint was dynamic to the user or the IP and I'd compare the two codes I used to see where exactly they get their tracking power from.

Right off the bat, the pinpoint on the map was different when I accessed from a different account. It was about 400 yards West of the other pinpoint.. for the exact same computer on the exact same IP. At this point, my suspicions on how MixMap does its job were confirmed. Rather than accurately tracking where the IP is static (your house or wireless network area,) it tracks from your connection hub. There are thousands of connection hubs in my medium-sized city of 500,000 alone. My connection can obviously run through multiple hubs, and changes it at times. My friend's connection seems to run through one hub, about five miles away from his home. Therefore, the tracking on the map is extremely inaccurate and worthless if you're trying to get real answers to who's viewing your profile. Not only that, but what good would someone's house do if that was the only information about who visited your profile? What are you going to do, drive to everyone's house who visits your profile? Yeah, right.

So, after the dismal display of accuracy, I decided to find out how MixMap works. I quickly recognized only two differences between the two codes I had. Two numbers were different, in the image location and the link. The link was to each MixMap profile, so you could view the map, and the image said "you have been tracked." On my profile, I chose to hide it. If you weren't to hide it, I'm sure it'd be clickable and would link to the MixMap profile. Right. So, it seems that when I only visit the url of the image, I'm still tracked. The image itself, and only the image, is the actual tracker. You could have just the image and it'd still track.

They also seemed to put about eight lines of extraneous code in their tracker. Perhaps the author of the code was unaware that he didn't need the rest of it. Anyway, I do believe I've figured out exactly how the image and only the image tracks you. It's actually quite simple, more simple than I figured. The image is hosted on an FTP server (will host files that can be downloaded.) When you connect to download files off of an FTP server, it will track your IP. When you create a profile with MixMap, it associates an IP address to your profile. When that IP address visits your MySpace profile, it searches the MixMap database for the profile associated with that IP. If there is none, it records it as an anonymous user. It's quite more simple than I thought it'd be.

All in all, MixMap is very disappointing in my opinion. It promises to track the location of your visitors but does so poorly. Unless you want a general demographic of who views your profile, that's pretty worthless. It doesn't tell you who visited your profile with any MySpace links, so again, no worth. It's very simplistic and anybody with an FTP server could very easily implement this strategy, so I'm unimpressed by the methodology. To be honest, I've viewed a true MySpace tracker. I once worked with a gentleman on making one, and we were successful. We used a back door of MySpace's coding and it gave you visit time, who visited you, which link they clicked to visit you and their IP address. It was flawless, but in the end, MySpace closed the back door we used. My point is that this is what profile trackers should be shooting for... to show you who visited your profile, when, and more, all without them having to register for some site. After all, those who you want to know are viewing your profile aren't going to sign up for the website. MixMap seems to me a poor attempt to try to offer you something unique. It's much like all of the other trackers.. registered viewers only and consistently buggy. Some day, we'll probably see another tracker like the one I made, but until then, I really can't say sites like MixMap are overly worth it. I guess the map can be kind of fun to look at, but it's not much more than entertainment. My overall score for MixMap: 4/10.