I write a bit about travel in New England on this blog. The new web is contantly providing new ways to share travel information. There are the traditional travel sites and those that allow for comments from readers. It is getting even better.
The New York Times recently had an interesting article, Practical Traveler: Sharing Photographs Online, in which you covered some of the ways the new web allows you to share your photos more effectively and use those of others to enhance your travel plans. As they wrote, “photo-sharing sites like Yahoo’s Flickr.com and SmugMug.com have begun to let users add another dimension to their travel photos. Through a technology called geotagging, users can add G.P.S. data to their pictures, which can then be plotted on a digital map. This not only allows users to see exactly where a photo was taken, but, when uploaded to an Internet map, users can also quickly browse a trove of photos that were taken nearby, providing a kind of scattershot collage of a place.”
It is still a bit geeky to use these features but I am sure they will get easier. More your can go to these sites and search for photos of your travel destinations to see what they are really like. It can get very specific, “Plotting photos on maps also allows trip planners to “see” the terrain before booking a trip. On Everytrail.com — which lets users upload geocoded photos from their favorite hiking trails, biking routes and sailing trips — visitors can check out sights along a specific driving route in Namibia, or examine trail conditions on a hilly bike route near Palo Alto, Calif.”
This could easily be another area of accelerated business activity for Web 2.0. As the NYT wrote, “ Last month, Google announced plans to acquire Panoramio.com, a photo-sharing site with more than two million images that allows users to integrate photos into Google Earth. And as photo-sharing continues to evolve, travel Web sites are recognizing how valuable images can be when users essentially act as free contributors and submit their own pictures.”
These features can certainly increase the stickiness for web site. “Zoomandgo.com, a travel review site, recently redesigned its site around photos and videos submitted by travelers. A team of four people spent months “geocoding” thousands of hotels and attractions so that user-photos can be displayed on digital maps. A new social-networking feature also allows users to create their own travel profiles, connect with like-minded travelers, and swap tips through photos. “Facebook meets Frommers” is how Jonathan Haldane, the founder of Zoomandgo.com, described it. Before the social-networking feature went up, he said, users spent about eight minutes on the site, mostly reading or posting hotel reviews. Now, he said, users spend an average of 18 to 19 minutes, sending messages to each other and browsing through photos and videos.”
That is a great concept for any site that wants to keep people there. It is like getting lost in YouTube.
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