MapQuest seeks to boost travel platform with new journey sharing app
AOL?s MapQuest releases new iPhone ready blogs entitled Travel Blogs to boost its travel platform allowing users to visually share the trips they make
Online mapping service
MapQuest has released its new initiative
Travel Blogs in an effort to boost its travel platform. Travel Blogs also includes an iPhone app where users shares trips they take.
MapQuest intends to use content to increase traffic and build better relationships; integrating social media to achieve this. Travel Blogs is aimed to help MapQuest continue to create content and encourage relationships between users thanks to the new app. Brian McMahon, general manager of MapQuest explains, ?Content is an important part of any digital product. Travel Blogs will help us build out our existing catalogue of authentic stories designed to inspire readers to hit the road again or book that next flight,? continues McMahon.
Travel Blogs is available as a free iPhone app and via desktop allowing users to create visual archives of their trips through photographs, reviews and stories from placed they?ve visited and mapping route they took. Users can create travel journals even if they are offline, it then updates automatically when they have a connection to the internet or 3G. This content can be synced to update the blog, which can also be shared by the users social channels or via email if the user chooses to do so.
MapQuest claims that users maintain control and can elect to keep their blogs private, but those who allow for public viewing will have their blogs be part of a larger collection of content throughout
MapQuest Discover, the brand?s social travel platform and the AOL network. This is a clear sign that the service wants to move beyond the just the mapping arena, ??and now we?re growing the brand to have a role beyond setting directions. With tools like Travel Blogs, we?re building a product ecosystem that enhances the traveller?s experience at each step in the journey,? says McMahon.
AOL?s goal is to try and entice users inspire others to do the same by the sharing content and also intends that authors can to turn their blogs into a physical photography book planned within in next months mentioned in
AOL?s press release.
AOL acquired the mapping service in 2000, which had 33.6 million business, internet, mobile and web users in January 2013 according to comscore Media Matrix and MobiLens.
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