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Mobissimo gets social

July 16, 2008 | Online Travel

As a real-time meta search engine, there’s a sense of immediacy that may be associated with activity surrounding Mobissimo, though that may start to melt away with the introduction of a new segment to its service called MobiFriends.

This new feature comes about as a result of a partnership with social network Thingfo, to provide Mobissimo with a collaborative community along with its travel search engine. The new networking capabilities allow travelers to connect with friends, colleagues, and family, along with the rest of the users on the site. You’ll also be able to do things like plan upcoming trips, and see what overlapping days you may have with others in your network, in the event that you’d like to meet up with them while you both happen to be in the same neck of the woods.

What’s interesting about this is that there are a handful of sites that already have such community features for their travel planning and management services, but there aren’t many that have leveraged a seemingly unrelated (to travel, that is) network for the provision of a community.

In doing so with Thingfo in particular, Mobissimo layers in a redistribution factor that has yet to permeate the online travel industry and extends the networking potential of overlapping travel itineraries beyond those users that are within the MobiFriends network. By tapping into a user’s extended network, MobiFriends is also able to provide destination recommendations from existing trusted contacts, for suggesting things like restaurants or activities, based on your travel plans.

Get the full story at Mashable

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