Last month a new travel social network called Tripwolf launched into private beta. The site offers a variety of content, including both professional editorial and user-generated reviews of destinations as well as a Google Maps mashup that layers users' photos onto a world map. Although Tripwolf is yet another travel site in an already extremely crowded niche, they've found some ways to differentiate themselves from the other sites out there. The end result is a good-looking, informative web site that's also a lot of fun to use and explore.]]>
About Tripwolf
Upon login, you're taken to Tripwolf's main page where you can immediately begin a search using the provided search box or you can click on one of the tabs to access other areas of the site like the galleries (photos), travelers, journals, guides, or the soon-to-be added "trips" section.
On the left side are links to your personal info - your personal galleries, your trips, your profile and messages, etc. There's also a handy scrapbook feature on to which you can drag-and-drop places you find on tripwolf when doing travel research. That scapbook can be shared with friends via email, or, with one click, transformed into a PDF that you can download and print out as your own sort of personalized travel guide.
Content Galore!
Tripwolf's investor and content partner is MairDumont, a European provider of travel information who offers a range of printed publications for tourists. MairDumont's involvement with tripwolf allows them to provide content for the site, including destination information and photos. The combination of this high-quality content along with that which is user-gen gives tripwolf a more professional feel while still retaining the fun of a social network. It's also nice because there's a lot of content to explore right away - currently over 200,000 points of interest have been cataloged - so you don't have to wait on a userbase to do all the work for you.
When you come across a destination you want to update with your own info, a wiki-edit feature lets you upload your own photos, add and update places, add facts, reviews, and more.
The Facebook App
Thanks to facebook integration, you can easily find who among your friends is already on the service and invite others to join you. You can also add friends from LinkedIn, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, Mac address book, orkut, and Xing.
On facebook, you can use the app to search destinations, keep track of your favorite places, and view what your tripwolf friends are up to.
Get In Today
The site goes public on July 1st and, at that time, they will be adding a way for you to book trips. An iPhone application will also soon follow. However, ReadWriteWeb users don't have to wait until July - you can go ahead and join now the private beta now by clicking this link. (Feel free to add me after you do.)
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