The Dopplr Effect: Have Social Media, Will Travel

With everyone and their brother on Twitter (since I’ve started, there are 1000 people following me), you might wonder: What’s the point?  Sure it’s nice to hear about what everyone is doing each day and during the debates I hit refresh constantly to see how the twitterverse was reacting in real time.  Getting noticed by editors is even better.  But it wasn’t until someone pointed me to dopplr.com that I suddenly could see the future of social media– applications that let you stay in touch and provided a great service.

Dopplr lets you keep track of all your travel plans.  It’s simple, uncluttered and easy to use.  It’s a “social media” site because it allows you to add fellow travelers much like you would on Facebook or Twitter (In fact you can import your contacts from email, facebook, twitter and so on).   But it’s the features on Dopplr that make it stand out:

1.  It’s private. You only see tips and travel plans from the people you want to see.  Just like Facebook, your profile is private unless the person adds you.  And unlike other travel sites (VirtutalTourist.com or Couchsurfing.com) you don’t have to wade through the profiles of dozens of strangers.  For me, this is perfect.  I can add my favorite travel bloggers and the privacy keeps the signal to noise ratio way down–something a lot of social media websites could benefit from.

2.  It’s practical. If you’re planning a RTW trip, wouldn’t it be nice to get tips from people you know (either online or off) rather than trying to guess which tripadvisor reviews are spammy hotel PR people and which are the real deal.  It also encourages coincidences– you can see who else is going to be there and who already lives there.

3.  It’s connected. You can import contacts from Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Yahoo and so on.  You don’t have to spend hours trying to remember who you know– one click and it grabs that info for you.  It also has functionality that allows you to post travel plans from twitter, email or text messages.

4.  It’s bloggable. You can see on the right hand sidebar, that I’ve added a widget with all my travel dates.  This pulls from Dopplr automatically, so as I keep Dopplr up to date, my website stays in synch.  It also makes cool google maps that show your entire trip on a world map.

5.  It’s Green. The neatest thing (and scariest) is that they can show your carbon footprint for your travels.  Ever wonder how much impact your RTW has on the environment?  They do the math and give you a sum by what you’ve done and what you’re planning to do.

6.  It’s new(ish). It came out last year as Beta, but they still seem to be adding new features all the time.  From reading their blog, it sounds like they are going into a round of financing, so I have no doubt they’ll be around for a while.  I like the idea of being an early adopter: before they figure out how to drive me crazy with Facebook-esque layout changes or granting users the ability to embed annoying music files in their profiles (like myspace).

Dopplr isn’t perfect.  Already I can see some features I’d like added or improved.  The trip planner can be a little glitchy (it seems to think San Jose, Costa Rica is actually San Jose, CA– which I might add, it is definitely not).  Also, not alot of people are using it.  I imported everyone I could, and only a dozen or so folks I know have profiles set up.  The main problem with any social media application?  People have to use it.  Otherwise it’s not so social, but just plain media.  And we already have a lot of those.

So go, sign up, fill out your travel plans and add me (I’ll add you back too!).  I want to see where everyone is planning on going– and who knows, maybe we’ll even end up running into each other on some beach in Costa Rica.  If I do, I’ll definitely buy you a drink.  It’s the social thing to do.

Author’s Note:  I really should be charging for such nice reviews, but apparently I still like giving the love away for free.  Dopplr hasn’t paid me a cent to write this review, but as always, nice bottles of wine are always appreciated.