Simon G's Blog

I was pondering earlier today while over 2000km from home whether there is less likelihood now of serendipitously meeting people when travelling, since friends and family now have a greater awareness through social media and location-based sites (Facebook, Twitter, Tripit, Foursquare…) of where you are and where you are going (and vice versa). About two hours after Jane & I had this discussion, whilst sitting down for lunch, a work colleague that sits a few desks away from me wandered past and said hi; she was in the area for a conference and both of us had no idea that the other would be in the area. So rest assured, there are still lots of opportunities to randomly run into people while travelling.  I wander who I’ll see next.

The end of my Summer vacation has come to an end, but it is interesting to think back on how this holiday was different from others, primarily due to the use of Social Media. Social Media applications are based around the concept of user-generated content and include the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Photo sharing and Review sites, all of which I utilised this holiday period. We spent the holiday period in the middle of the North Island of New Zealand in a few different locations (the Waikato, Whitianga, Napier & Taupo). At these locations we often did not know what restaurants and cafes were good, so other than just using the Internet for what to do in an area, we used http://dineout.co.nz (a restaurant/cafe review site with user-generated content) extensively to validate or find what restaurants and cafes we wanted to try. I also submitted my own reviews for a large number of the places we visited to dineout (see here for my reviews). Jane & I also wrote a number of ...