WebProNews » VibeAgent

VibeAgent: Travel Mashup With Social Networking

Glenn Letham — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 19:27:32 +0000

I read about this one in the USA Today… a new travel mashup that incorporates a little social networking enabling users to setup a more web20-ish profile, save trips, search for travel related info, join groups etc…

I’m still fumbling around but so far it’s quite clever. See www.vibeagent.com

I wish I could save past trips and include handy info about the trip.. hotel details, restaurant info etc… for example, I wish I could recall the name of that great Thai place in San Fran I ate at or the Indian join in San Jose… maybe that will come next.

I do like the reviews and the ask an agent feature is cool!

s …

VibeAgent Travel Network Upgraded

Doug Caverly — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 16:01:04 +0000

VibeAgent, a travel site with some social networking characteristics, has introduced a host of upgrades over the past few days. None of them will blow your mind, but they represent nice extensions of the site’s existing features.

“First up – My Trips,” writes Adam Healey, the company’s cofounder and CEO, on the VibeAgent Blog. I’ve edited out some exclamation marks and “caps lock” phrases, but he continues, “It’s pretty simple, really . . . . Post and share your trips. See where all your friends are going. All on your Me page. Now you can keep track of your jet-setting friends as they bounce around the globe living [life].”

Healey goes on to hint at future upgrades, and also notes a current crop of improvements “related to our signup process, meta-search, our hotel pages, and hotel reviews.” Some pictures of hotels have also been upgraded, and Paige Pooler has provided some custom avatars. (I hadn’t, to be honest, heard of Pooler, but the illustrator has quite a crop of fans).

It’s a solid renovation, all in all, and one that should make current VibeAgent users all the more loyal to the site. Whether it can create new fans remains to be seen.

Hat tip to Mashable’s Kristen Nicole.

VibeAgent Launches My Maps

Doug Caverly — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 18:29:53 +0000

Every travel site should offer some sort of map; they’re useful, and the idea isn’t particularly hard to arrive at. VibeAgent is going above and beyond, however, with My Maps, a sort of customized, social network-y concoction.

“This isn’t your grandfather’s Google maps mashup,” wrote Adam Healey, VibeAgent’s cofounder and CEO, on the corporate blog. “It’s fun. It’s powerful.” And – in a way that meshes nicely with “powerful” – it’s pretty versatile.

“You can read user profiles, hotel reviews, and group descriptions, or browse hotel photos all without leaving your map,” according to Healey. “You can zoom into a geography of interest and see who in your network has stayed there, and what they have to say about it. You can quickly jump to a friend’s map and see what’s brewing in their network. You can visit your Scuba group and see where they recommend staying on the Red Sea, or hop over to your Beaches group and see what they like in the Caribbean.”

Mashable’s Kristen Nicole has screenshots of My Maps in action; a system of tabs keeps things from getting too cluttered, and some elements (such as the “My News” feed) are even reminiscent of the ever-popular Facebook. Combined with Google’s Maps, that’s a mixture that’s hard to beat.

And so it’s only natural that VibeAgent is close to winning. Nicole notes “the company’s announcement that it has reportedly climbed the ranks to become the 5th largest hotel site in the world,” and continues, “This may sound somewhat surprising, considering that VibeAgent has yet to launch, and is still in private beta, but this is largely due to VibeAgent’s new partners, OneTravel and TravelWorm. . . . This increases the number of hotels in VibeAgent’s database to 120,000+, offering more resources for users to gather information from.”

Sounds impressive; it should be interesting to see what else VibeAgent accomplishes in the time before its launch.