Tapping the Travel Community
Internet Brands, home to Cars Direct, Autos.com and other sites in the real estate and travel space, is bringing aboard Wikitravel and World66, two collaborative Wiki sites that seek to be comprehensive global travel guides. Terms of the acquisition deals weren’t disclosed.
Going forward, Internet Brands plans to introduce (and improve) contextually-targeted text ads, which currently appear on World66.com. It also plans to distinguish the properties from one another by having Wikitravel focus exclusively on encyclopedia-like objective info, and having World66 encompass people’s subjective opinions and personal experiences. (Here’s the Wiki page dedicated to the acquisition.)
It’s interesting to see how user-generated content and collaboration are making an impact on the travel vertical. Kayak.com recently launched a social-networking aspect to its site, Kayak Buzz, and Yahoo! has tried to tap the community with Yahoo! Trip Planner (will it mix this with the new Farechase?).