TripAdvisor ready for its next phase of evolution

December 07, 2011 | Online Travel

Shareholders of Expedia have approved the company’s spinoff of TripAdvisor, setting the stage for what could be the next era in online travel advice, as a host of startups have launched recently under the premise that TripAdvisor’s model is outdated in these socially networked times.

Instead, look for more sites to opt for a combination of crowdsourcing, friendsourcing and whatever other sourcing they can access. Last year, for example, TripAdvisor launched Trip Friends, which augments the site’s anonymous reviews with insights from users’ Facebook friends. And Gogobot, which recently received $15 million in new funding, is working on creating a “recommendation engine” that will utilize multiple sources to create what Katz likens to a Pandora for travel.

“Friendsourcing is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Ryan Williams, director of client services, travel, for Compete.com, a marketing research company. “A lot of sites will start to leverage the power of your friends’ friends; if each of them has 500 friends, that’s a lot of people to tap into.

“If a review site can tap into that, they’ll do well.”

Get the full story at msnbc.com

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