Wild travel statistics through Facebook

by Jerry Guo on
Last week I talked about the “Where I’ve Been” application on Facebook, and how you can use it to see where your friends have been, but curiously also get some great airline deals. What I didn’t mention was that you can find some very interesting travel statistics on here.

Namely, it ranks the most and least popular places to visit, live and want to visit. What’s astounding is this could possibly be the largest travel survey ever done (not to mention a great look into the travel behavior of 20-somethings). The data are from more than 4 million Facebook users.

Here’s a preview: Most popular places to visit: Florida, New York, California; places to live: England, California, Ontario (what?); places want to visit: Australia, Italy, Brazil.

Least popular places to visit: Tonga (a whopping four people), Newfoundland, Zanzibar; places to live (Northern Territory, South Australia, Mauritania; places want to visit: Russian soil (haha), Pemba (never heard of it), and Medeira Islands.

The best Facebook travel applications


Using Facebook to find cheap airfare (and stalk people)

by Jerry Guo on

The hit social networking site Facebook recently introduced third party applications that serve various purposes. Some are useful: trading music tips. Some are more frivolous: killing zombies. Now there’s a nifty little tool that could save you cold hard cash. It’s an app called “Where I’ve Been,” which mainly serves to show your friends, well, where you’ve been.

But one of its newest features is “flight finder,” which lets you select a departure city and then view a visual representation of the cheapest fares to hundreds of international destinations. The best part is you can narrow the results based on how much you’re willing to pay. For instance, I wanted to go somewhere cheap in late December, so I selected Newark, NJ as the departure city and then used the slider to put a $500 max on airfare. Most of the dots that popped up were in Europe or the states, but I also found a $400 ticket to Lima, Peru.

One thing to keep in mind is the service is in beta right now, so important details like dates of travel haven’t been worked out. Come to think of it, I don’t even know which travel sites they get the data from. That hasn’t stopped rumors that the app has been purchased for $3 million by TripAdvisor.

Dopplr: Social networking for travelers

by Grant Martin on

One of the biggest kicks I get out of traveling is in meeting up with or running into random friends while abroad. It’s always fun trading stories or roughing out adventure together and can be a great bonding experience — especially if everything was unplanned. Just this past Friday I was waiting for some girl Chelsea to get out of the bathroom in the LGA airport when Edward Norton walked up and stood right next to me. He took a look around then looked right at me (probably wondering if I was that famous blogger he knew). I smiled, and he turned and left.

Such is the idea behind Dopplr. This tool is a great way to figure out where your jet-setting friends are traveling when. And if you’re in the same place at the same time? What better reason to head out and get a beer?

Dopplr is still in the beta phase, so to get into the “inner circle” you need to be invited. If you haven’t got an invite, ask that one friend you’ve got that travels all the time; he or she can probably get you one.

Border patrol is Googling and Facebooking you

by Iva Skoch on

Here’s a good warning to those travelers who have a net presence in Facebook, blogs, other social networking sites, or anywhere on the web. Watch what you write; “They” are watching, and you can’t escape your past.

It turns out that Homeland Security is now googling (that’s a verb, now, right?) foreigners entering into the U.S., and using this information in order to bar entry.

Andrew Feldmar (pictured right), a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor and now Vancouver psychotherapist, was detained four hours, fingerprinted, and barred entry after DHS noticed an article of his in a literary and scientific journal, talking about using LSD and other drugs in the 1960s…even though he has no criminal record and hasn’t used drugs since the 1970s. He was told he now needs formal permission from the U.S. consul to enter into the U.S.

It’s doubtful the border agent consulted lawyers to determine if a U.S. crime had been committed by Feldmar’s drug use, presumably in Canada, and over 30 years ago. What if his drug use was legal? If a person can imbibe, quit, and become President of the U.S., should others’ actions from thirty years ago come back to haunt them today? What about journalists that write less-than-flattering articles about the U.S.?

Searching the World Over for One Happy Guy

by Martha Edwards on

Seven years ago, two Australian brothers happened across a discarded photo of a man with a broad smile while travelling in Banff, Alberta. While most would leave the photo where it was, they took it with them, amused by the huge grin on the subject who they nicknamed ‘Happy Guy’. That goofy grin stuck with them and they made it their goal to find out not only who happy guy is, but why his photo was left behind … and if he’s really that happy all the time.

Flash forward to the present day. The search for Happy Guy has gone digital with a website and Email. Happy Guy T-shirts and posters are popping up worldwide. And Happy Guy even has a Facebook group — Who is Happy Guy? — that is 2,500 members strong. Happy Guy’s face has been superimposed in to close to 75 photos — his photo’s been to the Coliseum, inside the Death Star, and to sporting events near and far, to name a few.

And with help from the Internet, the search for Happy Guy is over. A family member stumbled across the Facebook group and now the mystery has been solved. That was the point, after all. Still, I’m kind of disappointed — the search for Happy Guy was fun and brought so many people from many walks of life together, all united in … well … Happiness.