Warning to agents about linking with social networking sites
Travel companies should be cautious about linking up with social networking sites, according to online experts.
Several speakers at the TTI conference on Web 2.0 warned that the high valuations put on social networking sites in recent acquisitions had encouraged many more start-ups.
In October 2006 youtube was acquired by google for US$1.65 billion.
FastFutures chief executive Rohit Talwar it was difficult to see which sites were here to stay and which had been set up just to sell on.
“The potential to sell the content is enormous if you build enough visitors and enough interaction between them,” he said.
Where Are You Now co-founder and director Jerome Touze also questioned whether the Web 2.0 and social networking phenomenon would die out as with the dot.com boom.
“What happens if what we’re seeing now goes back to 2001. Is it going to be Web 2.0 or bubble 2.0,” he said.
Touze added that there were so many Web 2.0 companies trying to capitalise on the trend and that people were starting to get fed up with the idea of communities.
By Linda Fox
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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