TripSay Launches New Social Features for Private Beta [Invites]

Credit:

TripSay is a travel social network that's currently in private beta and has been testing for nearly two years now. While TripSay isn't a travel-planning site, it is a recommendation engine that operates on the basis that experience trumps all--TripSay offers a place to share experience tips and arm others with such knowledge as they prepare to embark on their own journeys. Today, TripSay extends its private beta to Mashable readers; just send an email to [email protected] with the subject line Mashable to get your invite.

There are also a few new features to go along with the extended private beta, including groups, an activity hub, and filtering for recommendations. The social activity that occurs around the act of sharing travel tips is quite useful in a recommendation environment, and the adoption of some familiar methods makes it easy to latch onto TripSay's upgrades.

Credit:

The purpose of a Group is to let users converse with other like-minded users, and help each other in travels that are rather specific to a location, event, or a number of other aspects of a trip. The activity hub keeps all the users within a particular network abreast of what's going on, which makes it easier to receive alerts that are most relevant to you.

As far as recommendations go, filtering is becoming more integral to this drilled down and often personalized search technique, and is one aspect of travel-sharing networks that I've found in need of improvement across the board. For TripSay, filtering options are presented on the map based on your preferences, enabling users to get tips and location recommendations according to selected traveler networks.

Credit:

Along the lines of filtering data within a social recommendation environment, TripSay has also created a leaderboard so that the most useful contributors are more readily recognized. If you'd like to find users that may be just as helpful but haven't made it to the leaderboard just yet, TriSay's recommendation tools for making connections with users now encompasses shared favorite and dream destinations.