With a focus on personalized news, Zite uses the twitter and delicious APIs to deliver a unique news aggregating experience. 

Zite feels less like a traditional news experience (flipboard tries to recreate newspaper/magazine reading) and more like curated rundown collected by a personal assistant. 

Price: Free.
Ads: None (publishers add them soon)
Content: ★★★☆ (3/4 stars) - Twitter, Google Reader, and Delicious API, but no Facebook integration. Content partnerships took a hit after cease and desist letters from The Washington Post, AP, Gannett, Getty Images, Time, Dow Jones. (source)
Endgame: A rumored $10 million CNN buyout came to went down Aug 31, 2011.

What’s missing: A more simple way to share topics or stories with friends. A CEO the responds to student inquiries and timeliness of this post on my part. 

A screenshot of the Zite home screen:

A screenshot of the Zite section screen:
 

A screenshot of the Zite story screen:

The Zite preview video:

A home for casual readers and bona-fide bookworms alike, Goodreads users recommend books, compare what they are reading, keep track of what they’ve read and would like to read, find their next favorite book, form book clubs and much more. - About Goodreads

Goodreads was launched in December 2006 and has grown to over 6.3 Million users who have shared reviews on over 210 Million book titles. It is the number one social media network for readers and book recommendations. Goodreads looks at the titles you have read and the ratings and reviews you have written to create reading recommendations based on those of members with similar tastes. 

How to use Goodreads: 

As a Goodreads member, you have the ability to add books to your virtual bookshelves by browsing or searching for title, author, or ISBN. The Goodreads mobile app also allows you to search for books by scanning the barcode on a book using the phone’s camera (for iPhoneand Android). There are three default shelves: Read, To-Read, and Currently Reading. They are mutually exclusive, which means a title can only belong to one of these shelves at a time. However, members are able to build as many additional shelves as they would like, such as “reference” or “never finished”. Books can belong on as many non-exclusive shelves as desired. 

Once you have made 20 ratings, Goodreads will begin to make recommendations for you. The more books you rate, the better your recommendations will be. Recommendations are made according to genre as well as tailored to the contents of your individual shelves. The Goodreads recommendation engine is based on the principle that the best book recommendations come from friends. Unlike Amazon and Barnes and Noble, Goodreads recommendations aren’t based on sales data or skewed towards popular titles, they are instead based on the opinions and reading habits of members who have show similar taste in books (more about the Goodreads recommendation engine on Mashable). Yet another way to find new reading material on Goodreads is to add friends. All of your ratings and reviews will be visible to your friends, and when your friends perform any activity on Goodreads, it will show up on your main page in your Recent Updates feed. You can also link your Goodreads account with Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress, and Blogger. 

Goodreads lets people connect, regardless of geographic location, to share common reading experiences. One way to do that is to join one of the Goodreads Groups. Goodreads Groups are generated by members and are similar to traditional book clubs, but instead of meeting exclusively face to face to talk about the book being read, Goodreads hosts the discussion on a board (for example: The FFL’s Meet the Authors Book Club). Goodreads also offers trivia, fun quizzes, challenges, giveaways, and member generated book lists. 

The Good:

• Socially driven.
• Recommendations based on actual reader opinions.
• Interactive.
• Free!
• Easy to use.

The Bad:

• More suited to social interaction than maintaining a collection. 
• Cannot search by genre or topic. 

The Competition:

Librarything is another book-based social network. It has some of the same features as Goodreads such as adding books to a collection, writing reviews, and getting recommendations. Librarything is also sometimes used by libraries and other organizations to keep inventory of a collection. It is more focused on cataloging than social sharing.

Shelfari is the Amazon owned social reading network. It uses your past purchases on Amazon.com as well as your own additions to make recommendations. Because it is owned by Amazon, it makes every possible attempt to get you to purchase the books that are recommended to you. 

My Experience:

I started using Goodreads about two years ago. At first, I just liked keeping track of my to-read list. But then I realized how many other uses there are. I have added some friends whose taste in books I share, and found others who are interested in my recommendations. Right now I am working on developing a collection of board books for a local public library and I’ve been using Goodreads to see ratings and reviews of board books to determine if a title is worth considering. I’m also using Goodreads to keep track of the board books I have chosen to include in the collection so that other people or librarians interested in board books can use the work I put into evaluating titles to begin their own collection. 

Conclusion:

With such a large number of members and integration with most popular social media networks, Goodreads will continue to be a fun and useful resource for book recommendations. The mobile app allows members to use all of the functionality of the browser based webpage as well as adding special features such as using your mobile device’s camera to scan barcodes. Goodreads has also recently introduced features to connect your e-reader with your Goodreads account. For example, if you have a Kindle:

It will automate setting your “currently-reading” and “read” shelf books based on what you’ve shared on your Kindle. It will also sync your highlights from the kindle to your Goodreads quotes.

Goodreads was not the first social media network to be built around the reading experience, but it has show such growth and adaptability to make Goodreads a useful and fun platform for reading-related social interaction. 

In 2009, Google launched Google Places which allows users to rate and review places and make recommendations to friends. For business owners, Google Places gives businesses the option to “claim” their business. What the hell does that mean? Well, it means business owners can verify the information listed for their company and once this is done, they can update it with photos, links, and offers. The more content rich your listing is, the more prominent your organic ranking is. This is especially of interest to small businesses that rely on Google search engines to gain exposure. For users on the go, Google offers a convenient mobile application supports iPhone and Android devices. As an avid user of foursquare, Yelp, and now Google Places (on my iPhone of course), I am ready to give you the rundown on whether this app is worth using.

Features

Main Page:

After downloading the app, the first prompt you’ll get is whether you’ll allow geotagging to detect nearby places. After clicking yes, you are brought to the main screen which is broken up into 10 initial categories: Saved places, Restaurants, Coffee (who knew it needed its own category), Bars, ATMs, Gas Stations, Hotels, Attractions, Pizza, and Post Office.

How It Works:

Once you click on one of the categories, for example, Coffee, it brings up nearby business listings in that category and shows what it is currently ranked. Once you choose one of the businesses, it will bring you to another screen that allows you rate and review it.

Love It

The Google Places app offers a great feature when you search for a place you can’t see listed. At the top of the screen, if I type in a place such as Target or the yummy Chinese spot up the street, it saves your search and automatically creates an icon on your Google Places interface. What is also cool about this is that if you tap and hold on the business for a few seconds, similar to iPhone apps, you can delete it. It is kind of like having apps within apps. It made me smile.

Leave It

What first struck me about the main page is how it eerily resembles the Yelp interface (see photo). The Google Places app itself does not offer any options for business owners to “verify” their business. It seems inconvenient for businesses that the app is so focused on the end user and doesn’t offer any options for them. Although I prefer the GP interface itself over Yelp’s, I think it sucks that users can’t upload photos as a part of the business (on Yelp you can). I understand that this is meant to give more control for owners but seriously, if I am having a droolworthy dinner at my favorite restaurant, I want to share those pictures with the world. Also, wouldn’t businesses want more interaction with their users that way? It would make their image seem much more personable I say.

In A Nutshell

The idea of it is nice, it really is. I want to love it so bad because it’s Google and I love everything from them but it’s boring. It doesn’t have nearly enough features to keep me interested as an end user. Businesses benefit more from the overall business model but the mobile app itself is too focused on the end user. It’s a tough balance to find in terms of business and user benefits and Google needs to keep looking for it.

Relevant Links /Additional Information http://www.google.com/local/add/analyticsSplashPage?utm_campaign=en&utm_medium=et&utm_source=et-glbl-places-htpt_mbl&pli=1 http://www.google.com/places/ http://www.inc.com/guides/201106/how-to-use-google-places-to-market-your-business.html http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-places/id406513617?mt=8

In the world of social networks, the division of travel has been fairly untapped, especially as the breadth of information that can be used when it comes to destination plans must be aggregated. TripIt set out to do just this—take all of the info related to travel, flights, hotel, rental car, and activities and consolidate it into one itinerary.

Basic use of the site is focused on the individual and their travel plans, which ranges through several ways in which a user can input information. Currently, TripIt allows users to manually input information into the website for each individual trip, but the more useful feature is automatic integration through its partnerships with Gmail and Hotwire.com. Mostly used for flights, TripIt allows users to input where they are staying, be it a Bed & Breakfast or a Resort, rental car, and what they will be doing during the trip. TripIt then combines all of the information from several sources to give a timeline of the trip while adding useful information such as the weather as a way to give a complete snapshot of the travel. Once the ‘master itinerary’ is compiled, it can then be shared, synced with a mobile device, or added to a calendar.

Historically, TripIt was an independent company, founded in October of 2006. However once their business plan of creating a marketplace to simplify internet travel plan options proved solid, TripIt was acquired by Concur in January of 2011 for $120 million, $27 million of that in cash. Concur describes itself as “a leading provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions,” indicating that the acquisition of TripIt may become more integrated with corporations, rather than the personal and social level that it was once focused on (http://www.concur.com/en-us/about). Regardless, of the acquisition, TripIt still manages to remain relatively popular, bringing in roughly 200,000 unique visitors a month (www.appappeal.com/app/tripit/).

In terms of clout within its market, TripIt is the killer app, the go to network to store all travel documents. In 2008, TripIt took a large step forward for a social network by expanding into the mobile market, creating a mobile web page as well as introducing and Android and iOs applications later on. Because of its ease of use and availability across almost any platform, TripIt seems to be the best way to serve as a personal tool as well as a social platform and it shows. Mashable, a news source for social and digital media, considers it one of the best ways to make travel plans go social. Amongst reviews of other top products, Mashable has rated TripIt as one of the top 4 Social Web Apps for Making and Sharing Your Travel Plans, top 6 essential Android apps for business travel, and explaining that “TripIt is ideal” when planning a vacation using social media.

 What makes TripIt so great is the third party applications that have been integrated with the API. As of April 6^th, 2011, Tripit has “more than 850 developers and development companies building apps that sync with TripIt.” Each add-on, while not necessary for each user experience, has been used to leverage the power of TripIt’s powerful aggregation module. Below are a few examples of some of the third-party applications that work directly with TripIt:

• Airside Express: Stores and displays boarding passes for flights on a smartphone. Uses TripIt to automatically receive and store boarding passes
• Planely: Receive an alert to see who else is on the same flight as you using TripIt so sync flight information
• Tripline: Helps create ‘shareable trips’ with TripIt itinerary used to create a ‘travel map’
• Memolane: Creates a social timeline, which includes personal travel by syncing with TripIt

Essentially, TripIt has become the solitary social platform for personal travel which other social media rely on. While this ‘third-party reliance’ makes TripIt somewhat boxed into a specific corner of a market, it also helps solidify TripIt as an essential data aggregator online, ensuring its longevity.

While this internet application had a great reputation when it was launched in January of 2008, it didn’t have an enormous social network component (http://www.appappeal.com/app/tripit/). During 2008, TripIt recognized this and added a “Who’s Close” and “Traveler Profile’s” to the website. Now, users on TripIt can add friends share their plans and itineraries with fellow travelers. Now, TripIt has added the “Itinerator” which, when used with other individuals, will “collect all the [trip] data in one place, and will, from that point on, let [users] share your travel calendars if [they] like. In addition, the service even offers location-based friend finder alerts for trips” (http://download.cnet.com/TripIt/3000-2367_4-10802128.html).

Unfortunately, there really isn’t anything quite like TripIt to compare to, making it a difficult social media to judge; however, based on the amount of accolades that TripIt has received, it should follow that the program is almost unanimously enjoyed by those who use it. There are, however, a couple of other social networks that offer a similar user experience which could be considered competition to TripIt. Just after Thanksgiving, Mashable released a list of web services that travellers could use to make and share their plans; included in this list, aside from TripIt, was Dopplr, Bumped.in, and Globetrooper

• Dopplr’s service allows individuals to import trip information (flight & hotel) into the program which is then automatically shared to friends who also use Dopplr. Similar to TripIt, Dopplr doesn’t have quite the ease of use of TripIt and focuses more on being a social network rather than a resource, like TripIt, thus limiting the use of 3^rd party applications. Dopplr makes up for this by using a tips system, similar to what Yelp has done. By integrating recommendations into the travel system, Dopplr has differentiated itself from other social networks, but due to its lack of integration and low users, 29,000 unique monthly visitors in September of 2010, Dopplr doesn’t seem to be quite as compelling as TripIt.
• Bumped.in is a travel service which allows users to connect during their travels, whether it is commuting or something further away. The concept is that during your travels, you may bump into someone but often, there is no outlet which allows you to connect. Bumped.in allows users to input their travel information to spontaneously connect to other individuals going the same way. While integrating TripIt’s API into the service, Bumped.in seems to successfully created purely social travel site which, while young, may become quite popular (http://mashable.com/2010/08/27/bumped-in/).
• Globetrooper is similar to Bumped.in, but it a travel service which is much more focused on building trips and traveling together. Relying on its own interface, Globetrooper is very social in how the concept is put together, but unfortunately, with so many trips and so few people using the site, the basis of building a travel site for strangers to connect in an entirely foreign realm seems to have resonated with only a small portion of the internet community (http://mashable.com/2010/06/24/globetrooper/).

While offering the original, yet still robust, package in the original account, TripIt also offers TripIt Pro. TripIt Pro offers a few extra features for $69 a year. These include mobile alerts about flight delays and gate changes, membership at Hertz rent-a-car and other business lounges, the ability to share trips automatically, and keeping track of points. As an average traveller, I don’t see TripIt Pro as necessary, but as a businessman, this consolidation of information could prove to be essential in almost any realm.

Based on how well TripIt has cornered the market as a travel tool as well as a social network and that a large corporation has a vested interest in TripIt succeeding, I believe that TripIt will be around for at least the next few years. Based on its dedicated core users and constant flow of new users, especially after the acquisition by Concor, TripIt has the capabilities to continue evolving to better serve its users. Further, with so many other applications and programs relying on it, TripIt has cemented itself as the go-to place as an internet travel tool.  Based on its ease of use and the variety of applications that TripIt can be used for, including driving directions, flight status updates, and hotel reservations, TripIt is a fantastic social tool that should be strongly considered for anyone that makes a habit of traveling.