Recently the blog Travel in Blogs seems to have started a sort of Travel Blog community. From the outset it seams a great idea, but there is hardly anything available on the site about the site, about who does it and why they do it.
What do you think?
Added 15 March:
The basic idea is that Bloggers submit stories that can be voted upon like the Diggs and Del.icio.us es of this world. In one view you can get the hottest posts. But there are many other alike initiatives. For the moment I am reasonably content with the Google reader which loads very fast and gives you a fast means of browsing the blogs you like to read. Another issue is that the admin (whoever he may be) seems to get his ideas from a blog that looks as if it is a pure scraper or maybe even a Splog. I wont mention it here because I don’t want to grant it a link.
It is registered in the name of a thus far undisclosed person at the same address as the “aggregators” or “scrapers” i am referring to:
DreamHost Web Hosting
417 Associated Rd #324
Brea, CA 92821
US
+1.2139471032Record created on 2007-03-09 18:34:56.
Record expires on 2008-03-09 18:34:56.
Added after the comment of David of Travelhorizons:
There are some ramifications here why I am still not sure.
I suppose if it would be non – human, they would have programmed the spider bot so that it would publish posts (I submitted 3 or 4 myself) as soon as possible and would not leave them unattended for 48 hours or more. No attention is much more human than bot alike I would think.
Furthermore, I believe that I have seen Albert Barra making a comment somewhere that he had to do with this Blog. But I can’t reproduce the comment anymore. That would also explain why there is a Spanish section. Ah, wait, it was not a comment I can reproduce what I thought I had seen: it is this post More about the T-List, on his Blog, but my Spanish is insufficient to understand what he tells in his post, even if I use Alta Vista Babel Fish.
Also it is notable that as a comment on a post by self proclaimed spin doctor Martin Schobert, of the Austrian Blog in the German language, Kulinarisch Reisen (i.e. Travel Culinary) about The T-List a certain Danay asks attention for the Blog in question:
Can the T-List go Web2.0?
We have recently launched TravelinBlogs.com.
TIB is a social network for the Travel and Hospitality Community. This site allows you to submit an article that will be reviewed by all and will be promoted, based on popularity, to the main page.
We encourage all Blogs of the T-List to sumbit their content and get additional traffic to their blogs.
Best regards,
Danay
Danay seems human and like me not a native English speaker (“sumbit”).
So again: is it a hoax of for real, what do you think?
Update:
I’ve taken out the link as, sadly, when Albert tried to move the site to another server, he lost all of it. Later I met Albert at WTM in London. He is a very likable person.
Last edited by Happy Hotelier on February 25, 2010 at 9:14 am
There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme nor reason in what posts end up being on this list. A lot of it (once you get past the first page) is postings about specific travel deals being posted, I would assume, by online travel agencies hoping to get bookings. It doesn’t really lead you to what I would consider “the most interesting postings of the day.” Which leads me to conclude, this list is not put together by a human reader…
Hello David.
Thanks you for your input.
I have pasted some further musings in my post after your comment to make it more visible, hoping that the people involved take the bait.
Hello all,
I’m Albert Barra, I have been reading all comments and articles regarding my blog and TravelinBlogs.com and decided to post to clarify your concerns.
TravelinBlogs is an idea that came up between me and other bloggers some time ago. It was an idea that was created time ago when we noticed that there were very few interesting blogs about tourism, travel and Hospitality, and we considered it would be a good idea to put them all together or just listing them would be fine.
The original project was called thBlogs.com and we started with it by posting manually those articles we liked. It has never been an interest on making business out of it.
Danay, who is actually my wife, runs the site, and the ‘admin’ user you mentioned is her. There is no machine thing at TravelinBlogs, but just RSS syndication of those blogs we like, and yours is one of them.
Then came the T-list and we discovered new blogs. Some of them posted about TiB, and traffic increased fast.
We still understand that having a Digg like project for the Travel and Hospitality would be of interest not just for the readers, but also for the bloggers as it allow them to get noticed and get extra traffic.
Regarding your concerns about the reason why there are also categories in Spanish, the answer is quite simple, my blog which is considered of the best Spanish hospitality ones is in Spanish. There are also excellent Spanish blogs that deserve being promoted,and we post their articles at the site manually. Since then they are getting new readers from Germany that understand Spanish, and had no idea that those blogs existed. And last, our idea was also creating categories in German where there are also fantastic blogs, and French, but we are not so fluent in those languages to translate the categories.
I hope I have clarified some of your concerns. You are welcome to visit the site.
Let me mention that I really enjoy reading your blog. Congratulations.
Best Regards,
Albert Barra
Good that Albert commented here. Now it`s more clear what`s behind this project. Idea is great and I hope the site will grow and get better, with more content. Although Albert`s comment was thorough, I have one question. Does “to be liked by site admin” is the only way how to get posts there?
Hi Albert,
I am very glad you join this discussion and clarified the background a lot. I sensed this a bit, but could not find confirmation of my idea. As I suggested already to Danay, it would be helpful if you or she fleshes out the “about” of Travel in Blogs a bit.
It is not a concern that there is a Spanish section. Even in my own small country a lot of people speak Spanish. I noted it because I found this a clue that it wasn’t so much set up as a typical scam scheme to collect advertising money over the backs of us poor Bloggers 🙂
I have a question for you: Is my assumption correct that you are also behind the aggregators?
So I agree it is a great idea.
Keep up the good work!
gje
Thank you for understanding the project. I’ll to one step further. I will have Danay to work on the ‘about’ page to avoid misunderstandings.
There is no intemption to put google ads in the site to make money out of the ‘poor’ bloggers content. However I must admit that placing one only sponsored advertisement at the sidebar at a flat fee to cover the expenses would be more than fair fair.
And no, I’m not behind the agregator posts. In fact will delete the Travel Deals section to avoid posts like that. We want to keep a clean targeted audience.
In response to ehotel let me tell you every one is welcome to post their content at TiB, either if ‘admin’ likes is or not.
If you don’t want to post individualy your content, TiB supports RSS syndication. To do that, please email Danay at administrator@thblogs.com letting her know your username, the RSS feed URL and the default category where your posts must be shown.
Regards,
Albert
Albert
When will the updating start?
Hi Guido J, since you have been enquiring about the works at TiB, this is to let you know that they are almost ready.
I hope you like it, and you are welcome to suggest any improvement.
There are 50 Bloggers so far syndicating their feeds. Not bad, and traffic is going very well too.