Travel Networking

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Photos and Travel Social Networks

These heady days of Web 2.0 and all its evangelists has made it very difficult to not have heard about online social networking. Many do not know that in fact the idea has been online for more than a decade with classmates.com starting the field. The takes on the concept cover a wide range of styles from the facebook.com personal profile to myspace being a kind of personal webpage. I think it is very interesting that there has been an enormous shift in the social norm of personal webpages. In the early days of the world wide web, the early 1990s those that had the audacity to have a webpage solely about themselves and their interests were considered by many to be vain techies with nothing better to do. How things have changed?! Those without some sort of profile are now considered by many to be luddites who are going to miss out on the next big party. The arena of travel is only one of an ever increasing number of networks and it is to that subgroup I now turn.

One of the particular benefits of the more popular social networks is the possibility of catching up with people from your past. There are cynics of the online social network phenomenon that consider there to have been a reason that you lost contact with these people in the first place. However, while there might be some truth in that - there is little point in joining an online social network to only keep in contact with your very close friends - you probably do that already. The fun comes in seeing what other people who you have met are up to now and many social networks allow contact to be re-established.

When this is coupled with the endless possibilities of a vicarious existence, through facebook's newsfeed for example - very quickly the relevance for travel comes to the forefront of this examination. Who has been to where I have been? How did they experience it? Where shall I go next? These are a small selection of the multitude of travel related questions that can be answered by travel social networking. The self-serving publicity that many businesses produce about themselves means that the 'user review' is especially important. A clear problem with this is that everyone experiences things differently and while elsewhere I have explained why I think that is important it means that sites such as tripadviser are not always that useful.

However, the possibility of photo uploads can circumvent this issue neatly. it is of course possible to produce fake photos but many people would not have the time or inclination to do. Photos often act as the perfect advertisement and do so without being too intrusive. Generally in fact, on a social network you will have to go and look for them yourself. This is the advertisers dream - search with intent. Even if that intent is still ephemeral, it is nonetheless there. Depending on the constraints set by your social network there is less likelihood of a tour operator supplying misleading photos than on their own sites.

Travel social networks provide their members with the opportunity and incentive to refrain from vicarious living and experience all sorts of wondrous things. Choices today can seem overwhelming but once agan a network of friends can help filter these out - it might simply not be practical to take a plane to South Africa and then the boat to Saint Helena whereas a relatively quick and easy trip to Savannakhet is far more realistic for most.

By Pip Bennett on 09/05/07 whose is trying to gain a PhD as well as make Unearth Travel all it can be.

Directory

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Travellerspoint

A large community of travel bloggers with a handy budget hotel finder and mapping system. Destination guides are also available and there are people on hand to answer travel related problems.

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Travelmole

Often the best people to learn tips from are those within an industry. Travelmole is a large community for those involved with travel in some - go there now to learn about every aspect of this type of business.

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Travelistic

A simple concept that is sure to catch on: travel videos from around the world.

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Trip Tie

Using the itineraries of others you can work out what would make up your perfect trip - and maybe even go on it!

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Trip Up

Apart from the obvious benefits of having someone to travel and hang out with the advatage of specific local knowledge should not be underestimated. This site aims to provide an arena for people to meet and mutally gain.

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43 Places

A chance for people to write stories about the entire world, including locations that might not necessarily come immediately to mind and a clever way of gauging popular or frequently mentioned destinations.

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Trip Hub

Organising trips involving large numbers of people tends to cause all sorts of problems. This site allows all the relevant information to be kept in once place thereby reducing the chance of family rows.

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Where are you now

The social network keeps people informed of who is coming to where they live or if you are making a trip yourself whether there are any network members in your desired destination.

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Trip Connect

Trip Connect's team consider that the most relevant information can be found from people that you trus. They provide a system to build a netwrok of friends and gain useful information about the places those people have been.

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