Go Crowdless was created to help people avoid the masses in New York City during one of the most hectic times of the year. The holidays. We tapped into foursquare's open API and collected check-in data on key holiday destinations in the Big Apple. Each check-in is time stamped, and over time it revealed visitation patterns that we passed along to the site's visitors. The goal was to pinpoint each venue's busiest time, so people could avoid the crowds and enjoy their visit. As if being the most populated city in the U.S. isn't enough, NYC during the holidays is downright hectic. We wanted to build a tool that would help people avoid the busiest times at the most popular holiday destinations in the Big Apple. GoCrowdless.com used foursquare check-in data to create an invaluable tool for people exploring New York City during the holiday season. Some have called it the site that uses social data to help you be anti-social. On Black Friday 2011, we started collecting check-in data on 20 of the most popular holiday stops in NYC. The interface was built to display the number of check-ins that were occurring by hour, of each day, at each location. This real-time data capture and display of data made it easy for site users to see when attractions were at their most, and least busy. The site's interface defaulted to the current day so people who needed to make an immediate decision on when to go could see the least crowded time to schedule their visit. A quick glance feature offers the lowest and highest trafficked times of that day. If a visitor had more flexibility in their itinerary, they could drill down to view historical data, to determine the most and least busy times of the whole week. The beauty of GoCrowdless.com is that it is accessible to everyone, not just foursquare users. While foursquare data is not a perfect proxy for the overall population, it’s a helpful snapshot for trip planning.
http://gocrowdless.com/
