I was at a travel conference recently where the speaker disparaged TripAdvisor, saying that it was untrustworthy because of review manipulation. We also recently came across this article by Caitlin McDevitt that also echoes the trust issues with crowdsourcing sites.

What is a travel business to think? We hear of the impact of TripAdvisor all the time and client businesses see both the benefits of traffic from good reviews and the damage control necessary for bad reviews.

Are this article's or travel industry specialist's implications that a travel business doesn't need to worry about TripAdvisor because travel businesses are manipulating reviews correct?

We have counseled clients that TripAdvisor is a great opportunity, and we stick to this idea. Is there review manipulation and some outright fraud? Yes. Is TripAdvisor having problems effectively combating it? Yes. Do these things make TripAdvisor useless to consumers? No.

As some who commented on the article state, those who have used TripAdvisor state that yes, it is possible to manipulate, but it is also very easy to read through the garbage and make an educated decision.

I think it is important for travel businesses who are managing their reputation on TripAdvisor to speak to the educated consumer.

There are always going to be abuses on crowdsourcing sites like TripAdvisor or Yelp, but they are too effective on the whole and valuable to the consumer to go away, in my opinion.

Have you used TripAdvisor to plan travel? Did your resulting experience match the impressions you got on TripAdvisor? Share your experiences!

If you are a tourism business, then it is likely that you pay a lot of attention to what people write about you on TripAdvisor. Reviews can have a tremendous impact on a business, both good and bad.

I heard from TripAdvisor today a nifty tip -  they have a new tool for businesses to share with customers - basically, you can download a flyer that urges your customers to review you.

You can easily grab this on your owner's page,  print it out, and distribute to guests at whatever point you feel it is appropriate. Or, grab it here.

Have you used this flyer to help promote review for your business? Let us know!

Wow - the Pew Internet and American Life Project reported that 19% of U.S. adults use Twitter or some other form of status update services.

Some other interesting findings of the research:

• Individuals with wireless devices were three times more likely to use the services.
• Likelihood increases with a higher number of Internet-enabled devices owned.

As internet-enabled devices continue to proliferate and take on a variety of forms, it is interesting to think about the ramification of increased Twitter use in the general population, not to mention the growth in mobile internet behavior.

Though Twitter was originally used more by older males with high-income, it is increasingly the domain of younger users, age 18 - 44 in particular:

I just came across a cool new application for Twitter - TwitCam provides a simple means to distribute a videocast on your Twitter feed.

TwitPic, another interactive tool for Twitter, allows you to post pictures into your feed, and many people can view it right within your Twitter feed.

These tools allow you to add significant interactivity to your Twitter conversation, and it is a nice distribution method if photo and video are already a part of your web content strategy.

Do you use Twitter? Have you found TwitPic to be a valuable tool? How do you see TwitCam applying to your web business? Please share!

A colleague shared a great article recently about QR Codes. I know some of you are wondering what the heck these are. Well, these are two dimensional bar code that are starting to sprout up in interesting places.

These bar codes are designed to be photographed by mobile devices and, as the technology evolves, passed to a variety of systems that can process the information contained in the bar code.

Note - for those of you who are not sure what a bar code does, traditional ones contain a variety of information than can be processed when scanned. A most typical example of these are the product SKU data, price, etc. contained in bar code on grocery items.

QR codes are not scanned, but when sent by a mobile device to a computer system these codes can be processed just as if they were scanned.

Why should you care? Well, consider the following examples of use, which at this point are not far off:

1. (Not quite there yet but potentially possible) QR Codes as as typical Bar Codes - Use your mobile phone and QR codes to purchase something at a store.
2. Used as a means for a consumer to redeem a coupon instantly
3. (In the linked article above) Used as a link to a YouTube video providing expanded info on a piece of art
4. A walking tour in your community with audio descriptions of highlighted locations around town. (Guide by Cell)
5. Develop promotional items with QR codes on them with your company's info in the QR code.
6. Automated event registration.

Needless to say, if this system can be incorporated into automated e-commerce capability, there are some amazing things that can start happening spontaneously and immediately using a mobile phone with a camera and web access. The technology to capture these is still a fringe technology and not built into mobile devices, but keep an eye out.

Have you heard of QR codes before? Used them? Share your comments and stories!