It’s been a while since I had a look at any of the new travel social media sites out there which might make STA travelers’ lives easier, so when a beta invite to Gridpop landed in my inbox, I thought I’d have a poke around.

In all honesty, I didn’t have very high hopes. There are so many startups claiming to help you ‘discover new places’ and ’share recommendations’ that there has to be a real USP to make a site worth adding to your bookmarks. In some ways Gridpop looks familiar – the slick design (ironically, decked out in the STA Travel colours!), the on-site blogs, the ‘popular places’ and ‘top travelers’ community. But after playing around a bit, I realised there are some really nice touches here.

For one, the ‘Places’ section is appealingly simple -choose a country and click on ‘reviews’. When you want a strong, short opinion on somewhere, rather than a long blog of someone’s experiences there, this is useful. And the ‘Trips’ section gives maps and route plans for various journeys – great if you want to visit a region and aren’t sure how best to join the dots. Time will tell whether these elements will get more cluttered as the site membership grows – but if they remain this clear and concise, Gridpop will be a useful addition to our online arsenal of travel tools.