Have you all had a chance to check out Frappr!? Its an interactive community map plug-in designed to give web site owners and their visitors a fun way to visualize site traffic. Visitors can add their name, photo and message on any Frappr! Maps embedded website while granting the site owner real-time stats on any web page, blog or online community that supports flash including MySpace, Friendster, Xanga and Hi5.

Perhaps I’m getting old but some of these plugins seem slightly over the top and juvenile. I definately see the utility in providing webstats and making your site interactive but its almost like these online communities are becoming Sesame Streetish. Its like what new ways can we distract you longer while mommy and daddy go to work. In concept social networking is great. It gives you an opportunity to meet and know people from all over the globe instantly. The developers of these communities and plug-ins have essentially created cyber-crack in effort to provide stickyness to these sites.

Don’t believe me lets examine. Users spend precious hours of their lives, skipping class, forgoing homework to create profiles and decorate their pages only to tear them down a few days later in favor of a totally new design, profile imagery. Sounds like a crackhead to me. Then spend valuable sleep time rumaging through your friends network to steal friends from them to add to your network. Its has surpassed reality-tv as the most addictive form of entertainment today. Maybe because I’ve been to busy to be a Myspace or Facebook type person, I don’t share the same appreciation as the 800 Million other users who do.

Anyway back to Frappr! I guess our old buddy Mike Jones however thinks its pretty cool. Here he demonstrates exactly how Frappr! Maps works and then proceeds to shout out every city where his fans are located. Thank God he doesn’t really have a huge following cause this would have taken a while.