After about four months in private beta, social travel site TripSay is now open to all travelers. TripSay combines travel search with user-generated travel guides and ratings. When you enter a city or place, it comes up on a map, along with recommendations from other TripSay users that can be sorted by restaurants, hotels, bars, beaches, transportation, sights, and other categories. I described the service in my initial review:
TripSay combines social recommendations with a travel search engine that auto-suggests cities, pubs, hotels, and the like as you type them in. They appear as icons on a map, with a photo (pulled from Flickr) and description on the side, a tag cloud below, and minifeed of all the places you and your friends have rated or recommended. The detail page for each city shows other TripSay members who have visited, tips from members, the most interesting Flickr photos tagged with the name of the city, links elsewhere on the Web, and a list of the top-rated places shown on a map.
Since then, the site has added a few more features, including better editing tools, ways to collect and save your favorite tips, group message boards, and the ability to filter recommendations by groups. And, of course, it’s kept its signature rating system, which goes from smiley face to a full moon. TripSay competes with Dopplr, Driftr, and many other social travel sites, but it is worth a look.