Gogobot challenges ‘old guard’ peddling anonymous travel reviews

US-based online start-up Gogobot is prominsing to use social networking to shake up the world of user-generated travel reviews to end the reliance on the opinions of anaymous strangers.

US-based online start-up Gogobot is promising to use social networking to shake up the world of user-generated travel reviews to end the reliance on the opinions of “anonymous strangers”.
This new company has been public for only two months but its unique blend of social networking and trip advice means it is already on the cutting edge of the travel sector.
The company uses customers’ friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter to make personal travel recommendations. Users who sign up have their travel questions posted on their social networks, and then their contacts can post answers.
This generates a trustworthy source of information for users to help plan their trip. Speaking to Travolution via Skype from the US, Travis Katz, founder and chief executive of Gogobot, said:
“Today, the way people are planning their trips or planning where they want to go to dinner is by getting advice from anonymous strangers on the internet.
“They are going to sites like Tripadvisor or Yelp and reading these anonymous reviews and they are doing this not because that’s the way they want to plan, they do it because that’s the only alternative.”
Gogobot avoids this without forcing customers to create a whole new social profile or re-add all their friends. Katz says the goal is to sort through all the noise and find the reviews and opinions that really matter to customers.
This approach seems to be working.  Along with what Katz would only describe as “rapid growth”, the site has already received favourable mentions from The Wall Street Journal, USA TODAY, and TechCrunch.
Katz says he hopes to use his innovations to shake up the travel industry. “Travel has been sort of insulated and protected. The old guard is still sitting at the top of the pile.
“They are not building their companies around the things the internet can and should be. I believe every