Travel social networking sites offer insider tips
Looking for travel tips and ideas from fellow vagabonds? Not surprisingly, travel-focused social networking sites are springing up all over the place.
Traveldudes is aimed at the backpacker crowd and, along with general travel tips, has numerous reviews of hostels, B&Bs and other accommodations. Members can post travel diaries as well.
Dodo is a similar site featuring travelogues, travel tips, videos and photos. Information is grouped by country, and content is particularly strong for European and North American destinations.
Both of these sites have a strong German component, but don’t worry, anglophones–there are lots of English entries, too. In fact, Traveldudes has completely separate English and German sites.
One of the granddaddies of the field is Travelpod, founded way back in the dark ages of social networking in 1997, right here in Ottawa. Its main focus is travel blogs (more than 30,000 posts this week alone), but you’ll also find photos and videos, too. Ottawa Business News profiled the company on its 10th anniversary.
Looking for info on your specific destination can be a bit of a fishing expedition on any of these sites. And the quality of the info varies wildly, from long and thoughtful guides to short “hey, man, the pizza here was awesome” sorts of entries. But with some patient digging, you’ll probably find information that will take you far off the beaten path.
I still think the most valuable advice comes from the steady users of the fodors.com bulletin board. After all before "social networking" had been invented,before there was even an Internet–there were bulletin boards. And how social can you get?
Good point, Vera Marie!