When creating this product, TripAdvisor relied heavily on the in-house developers at TravelPod. Their main focus was to provide slideshows that displayed unparalleled production value. However, their most vital concern was that the tool provided the greatest functional ease possible with current technologies. It seems as if they have succeeded. The presentations produced by this software are amazingly vibrant, professionally presentable, and utterly impressive.
How to Use TripAdvisor – TripWow
To begin, users can choose from a variety of themes such as Family Vacation, Flying, Outdoors, Backpacking, Celebrations, Romantic, and more. Once the user has selected their theme, or skipped it altogether, their next option is one of the most shining aspects of this tool. Users can now retrieve their photos from Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, TravelPod, or their local computer.
Choosing the Facebook option to test its capabilities, forty-seven photos were uploaded in less than twenty seconds. Then it allowed the selection of photos individually, or by rows. The preview button makes this a fail-proof option in creating the perfect slideshow, as quickly as it can be done. To top it all off, you can now view your slideshow, make changes to it, and then download it to your machine or device. Users are even given a link where their slideshow will remain indefinitely.
Social Media Sharing
If the presentation itself isn’t impressive enough, and it is, than the quick one-click option to share your slideshow on Facebook, email it to your entire contact list, embed on your site, or to send it to other social networking sites like Myspace, Twitter, and over three-hundred and forty more social networking and aggregate sites.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAyKFuTO_ow&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL]
Open Options
Although TripAdvisor does target locations which allows for users to designate where their photos were snapped at, this doesn’t mean this tool has to be limited to sharing your family’s weekend road trip alone. Other uses could include:
- Marketing Presentations
- Training Slideshows
- Travel Logging
- Visual Campaign Management
There are certainly other options that could be helpful to many industries. A small business owner that owns a Roofing company could take photos of each roof they have completed, and build their highly professional and presentable slideshow to embed to their website.
Regardless of the business, most people will agree, seeing is believing. If your company makes a claim, and can provide visual proof of their integrity and workmanship, they are more likely to garner visitors from those websites that cannot.
Although many small business travel agencies have begun using TripAdvisor to advertise some of their greater destinations, no big names have picked up on this nifty tool as of yet. Considering the social media options and present-ability of their finished products, I would expect that to change in the very near future.
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I like this one. Sounds like a great way to showcase my fly fishing adventures in Colorado in July.
Frying Pan Ali