The site that was known for letting you share speed trap sightings is turning into a traffic love-in. Police, drivers, cats, dogs all working together to keep speeds down.
Since we last covered Trapster.com, it has grown dramatically. Up until last April, the site had about 500,000 visitors. In July it bust through a million, and by the end of 2009, it stood at the 3 million-user mark. The company claims to be growing by at least 15,000 new users every day.
Maybe it is because in the past year Trapster has added five new platforms (Android, Windows Mobile, Palm WebOS, Maemo, and the iPad). It has also added three major new features: a core feature called Patrol that shows if there have been other Trapster users on the road ahead, increasing reliability; Caravan, a social networking feature that allows users to share audio messages on a group drive and meet other Trapster users in their area; and a trip recording and photo/audio geo-tagging feature called My Trips.
And who would’ve thunked it, but Trapster is partnering with several police departments to get cops to add their own traps to the database. The Travis County Sheriff’s Department in Austin, Texas made the local news when they signed up. Even though they were being ratted out by motorists on Trapster, the cops there are now using the service themselves. Why?
“If I can get my compliance with out writing a ticket– I’ve done my job.” One told local news.
Pete Tenereillo, Trapster’s CEO, has even greater plans for his service. Asked what is the one thing he’d like to see his site do, he told TG Daily:
“We just added a location based Amber Alert feature. That one thing I would love to see happen: Trapster users band together and help save a child.”
TG Daily editors, meanwhile, would be happy to stay out of jail for now.
