The Aircraft Tracking System of the Future Was Built on Link Bait
Skift Take
The tech company that started as link-bait has become a vital link to the skies.
Even as the aviation industry argues over the affordability of various advanced flight tracking systems in the aftermath of the disappearance of MH370, Flightradar24 has established itself as the go-to aircraft tracking tool for individuals, media, and even many airlines.
But it might never have existed if a Swedish travel comparison site hadn’t wanted to rank higher on Google.
As CEO Fredrik Lindahl tells us, in 2006 Swedish technology entrepreneur Mikael Robertsson and his partners needed to a gimmick to make their travel site Flygresor.se stand out on the web.
“Like everyone else in the industry, they were looking at ways to attract links to the website, to rank higher in Google. So I guess you could rate FlightRadar24 as starting as link-bait,” he says with a laugh. “That part of the website -- which was basically just two [ADS-B] receivers in the Stockholm area -- uploaded a screen shot of what they saw once per minute. It wasn’t anything close to what you see today. It had a very basic functionality. But still a lot of people linked to it, so much that they had to move it to a separate domain.”
Flightradar24 uses a combination of publicly available flight tracking systems, but ADS-B is at the heart of its functionality. ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance—Broadcast) a
