Pointing to a map of biodiversity around the world, Vizzuality co-founder and CEO Javier de la Torre explained, "You have 300 million points [marking] where species have been. But most of the time what you want to have is not a map of all, what you want to have is a map of one particular bird."

Creating in advance an individual map for each of 1.2 million species a user might want to isolate verged on the impossible. So CartoDB looked to "dynamically create" the maps as users requested them. "That's why we really started creating CartoDB. Before, it used not to be possible to make dynamic maps out of queries," he said.

Users who leave their data open to the public can use the open-source CartoDB for free. Those who want to keep their data private or import more than 5MB of data must subscribe to a premium plan.

The IDG News Service