SideStep, one month after TripUp acquisition, launches CouchSwap
Travel search company SideStep is furthering its foray into the Facebook Platform tonight with the launch of CouchSwap, a new application that allows users to offer up their couches to travelers as a cheap form of lodging and to find and rate couches offered up by users in other cities. CouchSwap is the first SideStep product to emerge from the acquired TripUp, a travel social network founded by Sam Rogoway and acquired by SideStep earlier this month.
SideStep, already known for its Trips application (the 4th most popular Facebook travel application) and for acquiring Facebook application Extended Info and developer Trey Philips, continues its exploration into Facebook with CouchSwap, the company’s third application.
We caught up with Brian Stolte, Director of Product Management of SideStep, this afternoon about SideStep’s growing Facebook efforts.
“Historically, SideStep has focused on travel vertical search. Now, we’re expanding a bit. We want to provide ways for Facebook users to share their travel experiences and get travel ideas. Our strategy is to build a network of applications that help you leverage your social network to make travel decisions,” Stolte said.
As for plans to integrate SideStep web properties and Facebook applications, Stolte said the company will be bringing current web functionality into Facebook and current Facebook functionality out onto their web properties gradually. The company is placing a higher priority on stability and scalability now after experiencing some user attrition during slowdowns after the F8 launch.
SideStep’s applications show that the firm is one of the fastest travel companies to innovate on the new opportunities offered by the Facebook platform. We’ll keep a close eye as new types of travel applications like CouchSwap continue to emerge.
[tags]facebook,couchswap,sidestep,tripup,travel[/tags]
August 1st, 2007 at 12:40 pm
It will be interesting to see whether couchswap can develop into a credible and trusted comminity like http://www.couchsurfing.com
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:46 pm
err.. people really need to not require_login and require_add
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:44 pm
[...] firms battle on how to best use Facebook’s API here is a list of widgets do’s and [...]
August 6th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
[...] couch-surfing market. Travel search-engine SideStep has signed up on Mark Zuckerberg’s team by building a Facebook app, CouchSwap, to target the broke college-student traveler. You can search for a couch by location or send out [...]
October 22nd, 2007 at 6:01 am
I CouchSwap will have limited use, since most friends will use out of band communications (email, etc.)
May 28th, 2011 at 4:52 am
[...] firms battle on how to best use Facebook’s API here is a list of widgets do’s and [...]