“The travel industry’s leading social application” – Wall Street Journal

Travel application Where I’ve Been launched its new re-design yesterday morning! The application, which can be found on Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, hi5, and Friendster (as well as on the stand alone site) allows users to now search for anything and everything globally and locally. Looking for a cafe in your neighborhood? Planning a trip to Venice in two weeks? No problem! With Where I’ve Been’s booking service, you can plan your life easily and with no sweat!

Where I’ve Been also gives the ability to search for friends who have been to places you haven’t and travel professionals with expertise. Need advice on traveling abroad in Spain? Visit the Spain page! Looking for bars and restaurants in Chicago, IL? Go to the bars/restaurants page and seek advice from people just like you! Becoming an expert, yourself, is easy. All you have to do is show your pride for your hometown by uploading pictures, videos, reviews, asking questions, and posting comments.

Wish to invite your friends? You can easily and efficiently with our Invite Friends tools. In fact, you can even import your friends from Facebook. Where I’ve Been has made it easy to send friends a message or publish a review for them to view and admire using Facebook Connect. What are you waiting for, get started now!

For more information, visit Where I’ve Been now or follow them today on Twitter. @whereivebeen

Now, we’ve all heard of the Easter bunny, the furry animal that comes around once a year bearing gifts such as chocolate and colored eggs bright enough to blind you. Everyone has their own quirky way of celebrating Easter, but one celebrity decided to take the fun, sugar-coated holiday a step further..

Easter 2009, the Hawk way.

Tony Hawk, pro skateboarder and legend, announced an Easter egg hunt via twitter. On Sunday, he signed skateboards and sent clues to his 380,000+ followers in numerous cities across the country directing them to the various locations of the skateboards. Blueye’s very own Brice Faubel, who resides in Chicago, was a very lucky winner of one of those phenomenal autographed Tony Hawk skateboards. Well done, Brice!

Brice Faubel with his prized possession. Nice shades.

To find out more about the Hawk Easter challenge, check out Brice’s blog here.

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One question I get asked quite often lately is, “What exactly is Twitter? Isn’t it basically just like Facebook?” Frankly I’m still working on the best way to answer this one. Examples typically help in the explanation process. In many ways Twitter is like Facebook from the standpoint of updating your current “status” or activity, but yesterday I took part in one of the cooler uses of Twitter that I have witnessed to-date.

About a month ago, I began following professional skateboarding legend, Tony Hawk, on Twitter (@tonyhawk). Now some may think that following a famous person that I don’t personally know may be a little stalker-ish, but here’s the thing – Tony makes updates pretty regularly on Twitter, often including links to photos or videos, so it’s not like he’s unwilling to share information. This Easter, Tony Hawk gave a little something back to the 370+ thousand of tweeple currently following him on Twitter, his own version of an Easter Egg Hunt. He distributed what seemed like maybe 50 signed skateboard decks to various locations across the U.S., Australia, and Ireland (I may have missed a location), then released clues to the locations of the decks via his Twitter feed.

Well, to this day, skateboarding remains one of my favorite sports having spent many years wrecking my body as an early teen in pursuit of the elusive dream of becoming a pro skateboarder. That being said, I was all over this. At about 10am local time, the tweet came through:

“Chi-1 – Erie Park sculpture. Corner of Erie and Kingsbury in River North area (Chicago)”

That’s all I needed to see. About 10 minutes, and several stoplights later, I was on the scene. JACKPOT!

The game continued into the evening, all across the U.S. people were finding them in all types of places: photo booths, bushes, sculptures and in turn, Tony Hawk made fans of all of us all over again. Who knows what Tony was doing all day, where he was going, who he was hanging out with, but nevertheless, he was able to stay in touch with his fans, one tweet at a time.

Web designers not only have the arduous task of creating phenominal, eye-catching websites and simple, easy-to-use mobile applications, but they also have to keep up with the trends.

This is where Twitter, a free social networking site for people to stay connected in real time, comes in to play. If you are a web design company and you are not on Twitter, you are missing out on key opportunities for your business. Twitter is a fantastic way to talk about ideas, goals, and current trends in the industry by connecting to fellow web designers.

I will admit, the service can be incredibly confusing for a first-time user. One of the most common questions is “How do I get people within my industry to notice me and my brand/company?” Here are some tips of my own that I would love to share with you:

1) Follow, follow, follow. The best way to connect with like-minded people is to follow those with similiar interests as you. If you are a web designer, follow web designers. For an extensive list of web designers on Twitter right now, go here.

2) Post your account on Twitter directories. Join Twellow.com, WeFollow.com, and JustTweetIt.com to get your @ Twitter name out there!

3) Start talkin’. Give people a reason to follow you by talking about trends within your industry. Ask questions, offer solutions, share links, give advice and tips, use @replies to engage in conversation with your followers.

4) Spamming is a huge no-no. This is a serious one for beginners. You don’t want to start following 1,000 people and wind up with 0 followers. Keep a balance between the two. Be relevant, be yourself, be true to your company. Don’t give your brand a bad reputation by spamming people.

These tips are obviously very basic and essentials for beginners. What other tips can you suggest? Or, what practices do you warn against on Twitter? Please post in the comments box, or click the link below to email us.

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