Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Social Networks for Travel

With the recent popularity of social networking sites such as myspace.com, the travel industry has jumped on the bandwagon with some travel-centered, user created websites. These sites allow users to share experiences with other members that may help people with their choice of travel destinations, hotels, restaurants and other items associated with taking a vacation. This differs from many of the existing travel sites which just attempt to sell you items.

As a result, existing sites such as Yahoo's Trip Planner have added social networking features in order to encourage customers to stay on their site.

This is an interesting development and it seems to be a natural progression as people want to hear first hand about travel experiences rather than cookie cutter pictures posted by the resorts themselves.

Some of the more recent social networking travel sites are:
http://www.tripmates.com
http://www.gusto.com
http://realtravel.com
http://www.igougo.com
http://www.tripadvisor.com

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