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Where Are You Now?): The world's largest travel and lifestyle social network. What Travel Companies Should Know About Microsoft's New Social Network - So.Cl. Socl. [Social Travel] Wipolo, la plateforme française choisie par Facebook  Un site – un seul en Europe – a été choisi parmi trois autres partenaires voyage par Facebook sur sa nouvelle plateforme : Wipolo. Le site, disponible sur le web ou sur mobile, connecte les e-voyageurs, et permet de partager ses expériences de voyages entre amis, de retrouver les infos de ses voyages passés et futurs, de les partager en temps réel, et recommander les bons plans: hôtels, avions etc… Le procédé, qui, on le devine, a séduit Facebook, est astucieux: Wipolo propose un lien sur les autres sites voyage, et rassemble l’ensemble des infos que le voyageur a renseigné.

Wipolo concentre alors une grosse capacité de datas, intégrables dans la timeline Facebook. Le business modèle est calé à 75% sur l’affiliation avec les partenaires. Lancé en 2008, Wipolo a récemment signé plusieurs accords avec des acteurs du voyage, comme Go Voyages, Good Planet et Mondial Assistance. Entretien avec Matthieu Heslouin, co-fondateur de Wipolo. TravelAvenue wants to be the Pinterest for travel, with a few twists. Pinterest launched quietly into the world of social networking in 2010, but then made one hell of a thud a year or so later – with obvious ramifications for travel.

TravelAvenue has seen this movement towards pinning and sharing content by way of images and has been working almost in tandem along the same time-line (no pun intended, Facebook fans). Brainchild of three founders, Loic Dupont (president), Stephane Pinatton (executive director) and Stefan Surzucki (CTO), TravelAvenue now has a total of 15 people based in Paris, France. The company says it is an intermediary, in that wants to position itself as the middleman between discovery of products and booking, with a major focus on inspiration by way of images and allowing users to essentially bookmark ideas of where they want to go and what they want to do.

It enters a growing but increasingly crowded space, going up against the likes of Trippy (“US-centric”) and, of course, Pinterest and the “Pinterest clones”. Tnooz view: Snap poll: Social travel: Gogobot gets $15M, new Delta Air Lines app on Facebook. A lot of people, including investors in Gogobot and Delta Air Lines management, are betting on social travel — or at least playing around with it.

Gogobot, a social travel-planning site, announced today that it completed a new funding round of $15 million, bringing its stockpile to $19 million to date. The latest round was led by Redpoint Ventures, and Satish Dharmaraj, general partner of Redpoint Ventures, joins the Gogobot board. Also participating in the $15 million round were Michael Arrington’s CrunchFund and Battery Ventures. Battery Ventures was a previous investor while CrunchFund and Redpoint Ventures are new to the party.

In addition to Battery Ventures, other prior investors were Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe, Square general manager Keith Rabois, and angel investor Oren Ze’ev. Gogobot says it will use the new dinero “to expand its global footprint through marketing, partnerships and outreach.” Jetpac takes you on a guided world tour, as seen by your Facebook friends (exclusive) What's next in mobile?

Find out at MobileBeat, VentureBeat's 7th annual event on the future of mobile, on July 8-9 in San Francisco. Register now and save $400! Meet Jetpac Trip books are photo collections of the most popular places your Facebook friends have visited. Trip books can be viewed as slideshows. For more specific travel inspiration, jump to any city in the world. This is what a Jetpac profile looks like. Jetpac debuts Tuesday as a Facebook friend-propelled rocket belt, taking you on a visual journey around the world for your travel inspiration. The startup has developed a travel magazine-like iPad application, slated for release before the end of the year, that culls Facebook photos to recommend locales and attractions to visit.

Intrigued? “The best place to get excited about travel right now is still magazines and guidebooks … and to talk to friends to get their travel stories and recommendations,” co-founder Julian Green told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview.