The travel social media space is as crowded as a Soho pavement cafe on a half-sunny day in London. Everyone wants a piece of the online nomad action, but the quality of their offering can be as variable as the food offered in said Soho cafe. So I’ve taken a look at some of the newer sites out there to see if they’re juicy steak or a pile of old tripe.

TravelMuse has blazed onto the scene with a complimentary review from Mashable. A one-stop site still in beta, with editorial articles, travel planning tools, featured destinations, book reviews and more, this is a bit Web 1.0 - a resource rather than a community - but undeniably well-desgined and well-written. Visit here if you’re still in the earliest stages of dreaming up a trip, and want general ideas and inspiration.

TripWolf is another beta newcomer, but much more geared towards building an on-site travel community a la Travellerspoint or TripAdvisor. Invite-only so far - thanks for mine, Jenny - TripWolf is a ‘travel social network’ based on a Wiki model and easy to integrate with Facebook. Obviously, the site will live or die depending on the people who join, but so far their nomination of various ‘travel gurus’ to share their stories and their switched-on, social media loving attitude as seen on their blog bodes well. Sign up for an invite here.

So overall TripWolf sound more like STA travelbuzz’s sort of animal, as it’s all about ordinary travellers sharing online, but TravelMuse is a undeniably good source of information and top-down travel writing. Two meaty offerings for lunchtime browsing.

by Molly on 13 June 2008
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