RealTravel is an
example of domain specific knowledge sharing in the consumer
Internet space. RealTravel.com aspires
to be the best place on the web to share knowledge and experiences
about travel. The site provides an environment for a community
of travel enthusiasts to create beautiful travel journals
of their adventures, share them with friends and family,
and find other like-minded travelers. People looking for
information about where to go, where to stay, or what to
do in their travel can learn from the authentic experiences
of those who have been there.
The site applies technologies
from asynchronous collaboration, knowledge management,
social networks, GIS and mapping, tagging, content management,
and machine learning.
An important innovation is the use of
travel journals (a form of blogging) to motivate the contribution
of high quality travel information. Another is to organized
these contributions into a grid of structured data about
places in the world and semistructured data about people's
travel interests. By aggregating individual contributions
from people traveling all over the world, RealTravel can
provide recommendations about where to go and what to do
based on real travel experiences. Tom was co-founder and
responsible for product design and implementation.
About
Tom