What's the big Digg?

It's no secret to those faithful travel industry bloggers that Digg is planning to bolster its web presence by allowing consumers to post reviews about everything from restaurants to hotels.

Can anyone say Digg Travel?

For die-hard techheads who have used the site to keep tabs on their favourite blogs, etc, Digg's plans are a big deal.

For travel industry observers, it's more like, "Oh, well, here's another one".

So Digg wants to enter the enormously crowded, highly competitive, testosterone-driven travel space.

Well, jolly good luck to them.

Doesn't TripAdvisor and a whole host of other sites already do this?

Admittedly, a negative review on Digg could be potentially more damaging than one on TripAdvisor by virtue of the way the former works.

BUT....those companies which are unfortunate enough to have a negative review "digged", will face the same dilemma as when a negative news story about their company continues to appear in the top listing of Google.

It's not great, but, for most, it's not the end of the world either.

There is no doubt that web reviews are a force to be reckon with--if they weren't then user generated content sites wouldn't have to look over their shoulder every 20 seconds to make sure they weren't libelling someone and PR minions wouldn't be dispensed in droves to write up glowing reviews about their clients (cheeky monkeys).

Social media sites, which are command centres for consumer reviews, are sweeping in millions of marketing dollars everyday from travel companies which see the huge importance of this medium to their business.

So, will Digg be the next Consumer Reports or TripAdvisor, as some enthusiastic bloggers have fathomed?

Maybe....then again, maybe not.

Tricia Holly Davis, chief writer, Travolution

technorati tags: digg travel user reviews

Social networking and blogs for travel companies

Alex Bainbridge, on the TravelUCD forum, points us to a rather curious site, created for businesses by the UK's leadng telecomms provider BT.

BT Tradespace is an area for (predominantly) small and medium-sized businesses to produce blogs, create videos and podcasts, and publish deals.

The site is divided into sectors, including weddings, software and, of course, "Holidays and Leisure".

It is free to sign up and create a "space" - and many travel companies have.

The blog area for each business, for example, allows readers to rate each inidividual post, similar to the Digg model.

This is where the curious nature of the project appears to end and the reality of what is actually going on kicks in.

Most of the posts are little more than ad bulletin boards and are not really blogs at all. A case of using a trendy web model because it sounds like something that should be done. The voting element is a nice touch, but who is going to take the time to vote on a sales pitch.

As Bainbridge points out, the structure of the site - very keyword heavy - suggests it has been built with SEO in mind.

A good initiative but not executed particularly well.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

No longer Diggered

Quick post to say we're delighted to discover that the Travolution URLs have recently been unblocked by content aggregator Digg.com.

Whether or not this is because we specifically made a point of publicising the frustrating circumstances surrounding issue in December remains to be seen.

We never did receive an explanation.

Anyway, happy Digging...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Still Diggered

Few will be surprised that content aggregator Digg.com has still failed to respond to any emails from Travolution regarding the apparent banning of our blog and website URLs.

It appears a number of other sites have had similar difficulties.

Elsewhere it seems many the frustrations focus on the lack of communication between users and the Digg team, when a complaint or issues arises.

Here are a few lines from an email we sent to their press team on the 21 December.

"Travolution is a B2B publication, including magazine, website and blog, covering issues affecting the online travel industry. Part of our coverage over the last year has been to talk-up social media websites, such as Del.icio.us, Digg and Reddit, as absolutely key for those travel websites that want to beef up their web presence.

Please can you respond to this email, even it is for mild admonishment due to a breach of T&Cs, leading to the barring of our various URLs from Digg.

In the meantime, Happy Holidays!"

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

We are Diggered

A few months back we were alerted to the fact that Digg.com had refused to accept any new submissions of articles originating from both the Travolution Blog and the Travolution website.

We tried to post a few articles ourselves, only to be always greeted with the following message:

"This URL has been reported by users and cannot be submitted at this time."

We understand, of course, that there are certain terms and conditions that users should adhere to [we hope that we have, of course] and our own posts to the site were limited to perhaps one a week.

However, all our efforts to obtain a response from Digg.com - via email - to get to the bottom of the problem, or at least be told why we have been barred, have been ignored.

We also - as a publication that consistently promotes the use of social networking as A Good Thing for the travel industry - attempted to get through to Digg via its media team, with no luck.

Surely the world of social media must extend to being sociable and therefore responding to emails from users?

Any solutions to this problem will be gratefully received.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution