A new website from the managing director of Travel Buddy aims to offer users “Like buttons on the real world”
Stiki Notes bids to become ‘visitor book for the globe’
A new website from the managing director of Travel Buddy aims to offer users “Like buttons on the real world”.
Adam Winterflood hopes his Stiki Notes concept, now live in a beta version, will allow users to build a history of their trips by leaving virtual marks on the places they visit.
Subscribers will be able to place location-specific ‘Stiki Notes’ on Google Maps. The tag line is ‘Stick it…Share it…Remember it’.
Winterflood said the website was not intended as a review site like Tripadvisor or a rival to check-in based Foursquare and Facebook Places but will reside in a middle ground.
“Our objective is to become a global visitor book. Foursquare is about ‘I’m here come and meet me’ but with this you can leave a Stiki when you get back and your friends can see where you’ve been.
“In Facebook, when you leave a post it goes on the wall and is effectively forgotten. Stiki Notes creates a history and you can look and see where my Stikis are left.
“The great thing about this is you don’t need your network of friends to do this, it is actually for you so you can build up a history of the places you have been and liked.”
Winterflood said he came up with the idea after eating in a restaurant in Venice. Afterwards he realised he would struggle to explain to a friend exactly where it was and came up with the idea of leaving a virtual note on the actual spot.
Stiki Notes integrates with social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter, allowing users to post updates and invite friends through them.
The notes allow a gallery of pictures and short comments to be added. One of the notes Winterflood himself has posted promotes a swimming pool travellers can use at Singapore’s Changi Airport.
Revenues are expected to come from a number of sources including advertising and targeted deals on Stiki Notes.
Hotels, venues, restaurants or attractions will also be able to own their Stiki keywords with a unique Twitter-style identification which people can use to search for and post Stikis.
Commercial partners will then be able to take a feed from Stiki Notes to display on their websites.
Stiki Notes can be left direct from smartphones with geo-location or by sending a text message, in which case the post is ‘stuck’ when the user next logs in.
The concept was originally devised as a social element of Travel Buddy, the mobile information provider Winterflood established in 2006.
However, he said his original backers have seen the potential in Stiki Notes as a standalone business and he is now looking for board members and £3 million to £5 million of funding.
One of the plans for marketing the site will be to recruit celebrities to leave Stiki Notes for people to follow.
