Business | Tourism
Business travel hooks onto web
Corporate networking sites witness rare boom in times of global recession.
- By Michele Grant, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 22:59 April 28, 2009
Dubai: The world, it seems, is in a twist about Twitter, fanatical about Facebook and mad about MySpace. Throughout the globe, social networking has become an increasingly popular phenomenon as not just a way of keeping in touching but a complete entertainment experience.
But now business sites, which have in the past maintained a low profile, are becoming increasingly well-known.
Linkedin, a business networking site, is currently enjoying an upsurge in popularity thanks to the credit crunch.
Valued at $1 billion (Dh3.678 billion), Linkedin is one of the few global companies which is witnessing a silver lining among the dark clouds of the recession. It is estimated that a million people log onto the network every two weeks compared to a million a month a year earlier. The company's membership has boomed since the threat of redundancy forced business professionals to up the ante when it came to honing their networking skills.
With more than 39 million users in some 200 countries spread across seven continents, Linkedin is one of the fastest growing professional networking sites in the world. It allows members to create business contacts, search for jobs and find potential clients. By creating a professional profile visible to others through the Linkedin website, users can then maintain a list of known business contacts known as Connections.
Linkedin users can also invite people to join their list of connections and from there develop an extensive list of contacts known as second and third degree connections. From these extended networks users can search for jobs, business opportunities and people. Linkedin also offers the opportunity for both employers and job seekers to review professional information and post business related questions.
Meanwhile, Tripit is an online service that helps people organise all their travel plans including flights, hotels, rental cars, train and cruises, regardless of where they booked.
Founded in San Francisco in October 2006 and launched in September 2007, Tripit allows travellers to forward their travel confirmation emails to its site. From there Tripit processes these emails and automatically creates a master itinerary with travel plans, daily weather, local maps, restaurant reservations and city guides. Travellers can then print, access and share their travel plans online. Through social networking Tripit allows people to share their itineraries making it easy for colleagues and friends to see when travel plans may overlap.
This month, Tripit announced a free application for Apple iPhones allowing users to have their travel plans at their fingerprints.
According to Peter Harrison, the company's vice-president of marketing, Tripit is ideal for any business traveller, no matter where they book their travel.
"They simply forward their travel confirmation emails to us and we automatically put together a master itinerary that's easy to customise and share," he says. "Travellers and their assistants can access the itinerary online from their calendar, iPhone or mobile device and even with the Tripit application on Linkedin."
Tripit has grown quickly since being honoured at the TechCrunch 40 Conference in 2007, catering to business travellers and receiving praise and top honours from top travel and technology media and bloggers, according to Harrison.
Dopplr began as an invitation-only site and is a repository for a person's travel plans, both past and present, which are shared with other people within their network. Members who are planning a journey simply send Dopplr an email or "tweet" with the details of their trip and the site automatically updates the sender's profile. The feature is especially useful for business travellers.
Dopplr's CEO, Lisa Sounio, believes her company is leading the way in intention sharing services on line. She says: "It is valuable to know where trusted friends and colleagues will be and where you can meet them next. Partner brands on Dopplr will also give you relevant information and offers tailored to you."
- The writer is a freelance journalist based in Dubai.
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