TripIt, a travel planner, organizer and social networking site previously reviewed on Somewhat Frank when it launched at TechCrunch40, has added some more social stickiness to the product by exposing when your contacts might have similar travel plans. Since TripIt already offers an number of useful general travel organization and collaboration utilities the new location-based social “closeness” alerts are aimed at helping travels keep better connected with others by making it easier to keep track of when someone may be in your town or your paths cross while on the road by automatically sending out notifications.
TripIt CEO and co-founder Gregg Brockway had this to say:
“Frequent travelers just don’t have the extra time to keep track of their travel as well as the travel schedules of their friends, family and associates. With our new Closeness alerts, travelers are automatically notified when they’re in the same area, which allows them to stay in touch better.”
One implementation of the "Who's Close" feature looks a lot like the Facebook news feed for your friends and contacts travel plans (shown below).
I have used TripIt in the past and love the ease of use. I think it
might be interesting and useful to see where other travelers are
located. It also might be interesting if TripIt could work with Dopplr, another travel social network, since they focus primarily on keeping your contacts travels plans on your radar.
