I have been reading, watching and participating in so many events and conferences lately, yet haven’t had a lot of time to share highlights with you, so even though this is a late night, not scheduled post, I didn’t want these good items to get forgotten.
At the Eye for Travel conference a few weeks ago in San Francisco, we had the opportunity to listen to lots of travel industry folks talk about how they are approaching social media. Some get it, some are still trying to figure it out.
My biggest personal takeaway, and what I really want to share with you is Tripit. If you haven’t tried it yet, and you travel regularly, or like to travel in groups, then do yourself a favor and hop on over there. It has changed my life. Dramatic? Perhaps, but when I can make travel resies for air and travel and simply send the confirmation emails to a Tripit email account and then get a notification that all my travel plans are organized for me, I’m happy.
It lines up your various pieces of information in one place. No more digging through emails, trying to remember who you booked that flight with and where the heck is the confirmation number so you can pre-board online. If you’re planning a trip with friends, you can create a trip and all share your flights, etc. together. You can stop the endless email chains. And, special bonus, if you have an iPhone, you can download Travel Tracker and download your Tripit account to your phone. Travel Tracker is currently on sale at $9.99 so now’s the time to get it.
Oh, and one more thing – Tripit has a partnership with LinkedIn, so when you travel you can see who from your LinkedIn network is going to be in town the same time as you. But that will only work if we all get on Tripit. So let’s get on it.
Last week, MarketingProfs held its Digital Marketing World Virtual Conference. This was an amazing event as it pulled somewhere around 14,000 people into a virtual world with speakers, networking, and trade show booths. Now, I was never into Second Life, have a hard enough time keeping up with the first one, but this was impressive. Looks to me like the company that did the back end work to make it happen was InXpo, whose tag line reads Virtual Events. Real Results. It felt like new ground was being broken with this one. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of these.

Finally, a few things comments about Twitter. If you have been trying to figure out how to best manage and enjoy Twitter, read Jennifer Van Grove’s latest desktop comparison post on Mashable. I think she’s right, for most tweeps, Tweetdeck is the way to go. And with its new ability to track Facebook updates it’s a keeper for me. But for those with multiple Twitter accounts, it looks like the new Seesmic, which took over Twhirl, is the answer.
Speaking of those with more than one Twitter account, there is a new agency forming that is dedicated to sending out Twitter posts under the guise of favorite characters from movies and TV. The woman who started it had created the character of Peggy Olson from Mad Men and did such a great job at it that she won a Shorty Award. So now she wants to make a business out of it. She clearly knows a lot about social media and PR, but I think this idea is a wobbler. Once people know that a personality is not real or being “ghost Tweeted”, they generally get turned off and unfollow. Why would you follow a “pretend” character from a show? It was a fun novelty with Mad Men as people weren’t really sure what was going on, it was the first time it had happened and it was kept under wraps so well. But the Twitter community has gotten hip to those tricks now and I don’t think they’ll fall for it over and over. But hey, if someone can make a living from it, more power to them.

And with that, I will send out a Tweet about this post and look forward to more exploring tomorrow.