It’s been an incredible week.
After an exhausting month getting our site ready for launch, the entire team is resting and enjoying a well-deserved weekend AFK (away from keyboard). Well, except for this blog entry. 
We successfully launched our site at the PhoCusWright conference in Orlando, to overwhelmingly positive reviews. Travolution, live-blogging the event for the benefit of those who couldn’t (understandably) swallow the high entry fee or were otherwise indisposed, declared VibeAgent the biggest buzz of the conference. Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb, the highly respected tech blogger, delivered a very positive and thoughtful write-up covering our launch, as did Nick Gonzalez over at TechCrunch.
PhoCusWright did provoke some very interesting observations.
All four major OTA CEOs (Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Priceline) paid tons of lip service in their keynotes to the need for the travel industry to increase the level of personalization, social interaction, and user content in the travel research and booking process. Even the President of American Express Corporate Travel discussed the importance of integrating social elements to their corporate travel platform. We couldn’t help but feel validation that VibeAgent is at the forefront of our industry’s trend towards personalization, socialization, and user-generated content.
Travelocity and TripAdvisor both announced their participation in Facebook’s Beacon platform. I can’t help but think that this one may come back and bite them in the face - pun intended. I believe consumers are wise enough to know the difference between an advertisement and a recommendation. IMO, Beacon blatantly exploits fb’s members by having them personally deliver advertisements to their friends.
Recommendations are requested, advertisements are not. In Facebook’s quest to monetize their greatest asset - the social connections that exist between its 50+ million users - they may be destroying the network’s utility and sacrificing long-term growth for short-term gain. The verdict is still out, but as Daniel over at Cloudbrain said over lunch last week, facebook users may quickly feel the need to get a spam filter for their news feed. I predict we see Facebook usage decline on a per-user basis over the coming quarters as a result. Or, Facebook will be left to the mall rats and opportunities will arise for other social platforms with alternative ways to monetize their user base *ahem*.
