TripAdvisor: The Web‘s Strongest Travel Community

Saving Links Through IM with Meshly
By Josh Catone
 
Meshly is not really like Twitter; it is not really like del.icio.us; and it is not really like digg. But comparisons to all three are fair when trying to figure out just what exactly Meshly actually is. Like Twitter, Meshly is an instant blogging application, like del.icio.us it is about saving links, and it has a voting component that closely resembles digg.
The best way to describe Meshly is as an instant messenger based bookmarking tool. Using either MSN, AIM, or GTalk instant messengers, users post, tag, and describe links to Meshly. The entire sign up process is done via instant messenger, and is pretty painless. Once links are posted to the site, people vote on them digg-style so the best each day, week, and month are highlighted. Users can comment on the links via the site, or browse by tag like on del.icio.us.

Meshly also lets users create a personal "channel," if they so desire. Channels are sort of like a personal tag for all of your links that lets people watch, discuss, and vote on links you add them. Any channel or tag can be made into a widget that you can embed into your website.
Adding a link to Meshly goes something like this:
 
User: post
meshly: adding a new post. type cancel at any time to quit.
please enter the url for the link
User: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_expansion_of_social_networks.php
meshly: enter a title for the link
User: The Expansion of Social Networks
meshly: enter a brief description of the link
User: Alex Iskold looks at how social networks will expand into niche verticals and what that means for everyone (general social networks and niche ones alike).
meshly: enter post tags (keywords) seperated by spaces (example: funny tech robots)
User: web2.0 socialnetworks vertical iskold readwriteweb
meshly: what channel(s) should i submit your post to?
enter 1 or more channel names seperated by a space. if the channel doesn‘t exist, a new channel will be created.
post to general if you don‘t know where to place this post.
(example: general yourblogname scienceinterest)
User: web2.0
meshly: about to post:
The Expansion of Social Networks
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_expansion_of_social_networks.php
Alex Iskold looks at how social networks will expand into niche verticals and what that means for everyone (general social networks and niche ones alike).
filed under: web2.0 socialnetworks vertical iskold readwriteweb
posted to: web2.0
okay? (y/n)
User: y
Conclusion
It would be easy to dismiss Meshly as just another digg or del.icio.us clone with a gimmick (IM posting). But Meshly is well made, if not so polished in presentation, and posting from IM is convenient and should appeal to the Twitter set, who expect instant gratification. Their widget is a very clever addition, that allows people to create a link blog without really having to do any work, and could help spread the site. See a cool link? IM Meshly and it gets posted to your widget automatically.
There is a bit of confusion between tags and channels, however -- the two seem redundant to me, and Meshly would also be wise to add a standard bookmarklet so people can add links without going through the IM bot.



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Posted on: Thu, Apr 26 2007 7:26 AM
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TripAdvisor: The Web‘s Strongest Travel Community
By Sramana Mitraon Analysis
 
We have been discussing theonline travel industry and have coveredYahoo! Travel from aWeb 3.0 perspective already. Here we take a look at the offering from online travel community behemothTripAdvisor.
TripAdvisor was founded in February 2000 and is among the world’s largest online travel communities with over 20 million unique monthly visitors and approximately 5 million registered members. TripAdvisor is currently part ofExpedia (NASDAQ: EXPE). The site is a winner ofPC Magazine‘s Top 100 Web Sites andForbes‘ Best of the Web.

Context
TripAdvisor provides recommendations for hotels, resorts, inns, vacation packages, and travel guides. The site is broken up into distinct categories like Find Hotels, Flights, Read & Write Reviews, Browse Destinations, Rants & Raves, GoLists, TripAdvisor Forums, Helpful Links, Top Business Hotels, TripAdvisor Inside, and Photo and Video Sharing, but the organization could be better. The users have the freedom of moving quickly from one category to another, but the organization doesn‘t necessarily create an integrated contextual experience. TripAdvisor doesn‘t flow with the natural rhythm of the travel planning experience.
In fact, the key problem with TripAdvisor is its organization. I tried to look at the photos of Giraffe Manor B&B in Nairobi, but after scrolling through numerous pages, I couldn‘t find them, even though the reviewer claims to have posted them.
Content
TripAdvisor has a wide range of content. The site contains information on over 180,000 hotels and 91,000 restaurants in 23,000 cities. Users can also browse travel destinations across the world with the aid of a travel map and as the searches narrow down, the user is provided with a local map showing local attractions and the best deals for local hotels.
TripAdvisor is wiki-enabled, which facilitates millions of travelers to view, contribute, and edit the guides available on more than 24,000 destinations worldwide. The site also has photos and videos. The site has tie-ins with over 17 business partners in the travel industry including Expedia,Sabre,Orbitz andAmerican Airlines.

Community
TripAdvisor has the largest travel community on the web, which is visited by more than 500,000 travelers every day. TheTripAdvisor Forum allows users to post their experiences about tours, express opinions, recommend hotels, resorts, inns, vacations, travel packages, vacation packages, post questions and answer or advise other members of the forum. Users can also post photos and videos of their tours. TripAdvisor allows users to create a travel blog onTravelPod.
TripAdvisor is by far the most successful in engaging a global community of travelers in sharing their experiences and reviews on the site. The Rant & Rave function can make or break the reputation of a hotel or a restaurant in a nanosecond, and is tremendously helpful to travelers!
Commerce
TripAdvisor has tie-ins with a number of commerce sites such as its parent Expedia,Hotels.com,British Airways,Delta,Priceline andLastminute.com, all of which aid its users in booking flights, hotels, vacations or cruises, enabling the site to earn commission revenue. This, however, is a commodity function, available on all travel sites.
The TripAdvisor Store retails variousTripAdvisor Gear through a partnership withCafepress. Items sold by TripAdvisor include hats, mugs, clothing, bags etc. The site has identified a way of monetizing its brand, but so far, this looks like a fairly shabby effort, since to be blunt, the merchandising, by and large, sucks. They should look at how National Geographic does its merchandising, by creating unique products sourced from various parts of the world - jackets from Nepal, wool slippers from Tibet, caps from Peru - rather than this bland catalog of insignia products.
Personalization
TripAdvisor offers some good personalization and travel planning options. Each personalized page contains full information about the user, stating the person’s recent travels or booking, contributions to TripAdvisor, reviews and also includes user preferences for travel (pleasure or business), spending habits, and vacation choices. The personalization facility allows users to organize and plan one’s trip, save hotels, attractions, compare hotels, make a list of places one would like to visit, add maps and notes, organize items by destination or days, and create a personal travel guidebook to save, print or email.
The site also informs the registered users with a time-sensitive e-mail newsletter for travelers planning a vacation, giving customized e-mail alerts on specific hotels, attractions and cities of their choice. The site also has other personalized newsletters like TripWatch and Weekend Getaway Guide provided through email.

Vertical Search
TripAdvisor offers user-friendly search options for hotels and flights enabling users to select from multiple options according to their preferences, but there is nothing special or overly different about it.
I would like to plan a trip centered around B&Bs in Andalucia (Southern Spain). How do I do that? The vertical search option simply doesn‘t get sophisticated enough quite yet.
Business Model
TripAdvisor has an Alexa traffic rank of 504 and has more than 20 million unique monthly visitors. The site has display advertising as well as cost-per-click advertising.Travel Ad Network is TripAdvisor’s exclusive advertising representative for display advertising. Advertising and Commissions on bookings constitute their primary revenue streams.
Conclusion
My finalWeb 3.0 Rating is: Context: A-; Content: A-; Community: A+; Commerce: B-; Personalization: B+; Vertical Search: B-; Overall : A-