Swimmers are fanatical. They need that great fix daily. Wherever they are.Swimmers know that Swimmers Guide  is the indispensable bible of every swimming pool  worth swimming in globally. There's nothing like it in any other sport.

The Swimmers database contains 14,978 listings or 15,946 year-round, full-size pools in 8,830 communities and 155 countries. Once only U.S. pools, it now  has 10,816 listings in 154 other countries or 72%of the total.

And  get this. Its old style. Just  information. Bill Haverland, the brain behind the Guide, by himself, built the website  listing by listing, pool by pool, night after night, starting in  the early nineties.

Originally he published information as a book. after sending out thousands of questionnaires. But the internet is its natural home. Bill ferrets out new pools in new countries using Google. He uses Adsense for a small return on what he's put into the site. Entry's are built using Excel, transcribed to Access, so that the server's Cold Fusion database can read it. Then there's a lot of live/ not live playing around. It's all time intensive. Laborious. Prone to error. Tough to operate. But refreshing.

We keep talking about the new, the change, but here's one guy with one great idea who keeps doing it for almost no return. Why? Just because he thinks its important. It's that attitude that built the net. It's building blogging (which The Guide and Bill ought to look at)

You can wonder why International Swimming Associations or commercial organizations like Speedo, don't try and buy the website from Bill.  Use the comprehensiveness of the Guide as a base for a drive to promote or market the sport, gain new swimmers or lobby politicians and governments for new pools.

Whatever. They haven't. And that mindset is why swimming, despite being superb exercise, is still only a niche sport. 

Still. One guy knows how big swimming is. His website shows it. And for that reason, his users love it. The web at its best.