Why FriendTrack shows a venue image

A street map of a festival field is a green rectangle. A street map of a ski area is a contour line. Neither tells you which stage your friends are at or which piste they are on, because the thing you need named is not a road.

So FriendTrack draws people on the venue’s own picture — the piste map on the back of your lift pass, the site plan on the festival website, a floor plan — tied to the real world tightly enough that a phone standing at the food court is drawn at the food court. The names on it are the names everybody around you is using, and the parts that matter are the parts the venue chose to draw.

What you give up is everything outside the picture. A Map stops at the venue’s edge, so somebody in the overflow car park may be off it, and the app says 📍 You are outside this map rather than pretending otherwise. FriendTrack also works with no Map at all — you still see who is sharing and how fresh it is, just without a place to put them.

Using a venue’s own branded FriendTrack app? Your app carries the venue’s name and shows a Powered by FriendTrack note, and it is locked to that venue’s Map. So the picture is chosen for you and there is nothing to find or install, but the rest of this page still describes what you are looking at.

Maps are made by people: a venue, an organiser, or one member of your own Group. Finding one is find and install a map; making one is Building a Map.