Facebook has gone Like crazy and TripAdvisor got in on the early action.
It’s been widely reported that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicted yesterday that Facebook would serve around 1 billion “Likes” across the Web within 24 hours of launching the Like plug-in for third parties websites, and TripAdvisor.com was among the first adopters.
In launching the Like tool on TripAdvisor.com, the hotel-review site gave the Like tool some prime real estate on its hotel pages.
When you go to any hotel page on TripAdvisor.com — take the W New York Times Square, for example — “Like” and Facebook icons appear next to the hotel name at the top of the page, along with the following: “Be the first of your friends to like this.” It looks like this:
When you click on Like, it says “Dennis Schaal [or whoever you are] likes this” next to the hotel name on TripAdvisor.
And, on Facebook, it reads: “Dennis [or whoever you are] likes W – Times Square, New York City on TripAdvisor.”
So, as you share your fondness for the property with your Facebook friends, TripAdvisor gets two links — one back to the hotel’s page on TripAdvisor, and another to the TripAdvisor.com homepage.
Poor W – Times Square, of course, gets no direct links for all the Liking going on, but it may get some incremental bookings through TripAdvisor’s advertisers.
For example, the TripAdvisor Check Rates feature within the TripAdvisor W New York – Times Square page includes booking engines from Whotels, Orbitz, Booking.com, Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Travelocity, 1800Hotels, Otel.com, Priceline.com, PerfectEscapes.com and TabletHotels.com.
There are some issues with the Like button and its, ahem, likely proliferation across the Web, including on online travel websites.
There is the potential that the W – Times Square — or any hotel, for that matter– could enlist legions of Likers for marketing purposes despite the fact that there is no requirement or verification that any of them actually stayed at the property.
And, social networking should not be just a bunch of happy talk.
Don’t your social networking friends also want to know about the hotels and destinations you disliked?
What about the properties where your experience was so poor that you would never revisit the establishment?
I hate to rain on the Like parade — but if you are going to share your hotel preferences with your friends, there should be a dislike button, as well.
But, that wouldn’t be very advertiser-friendly, would it.
TripAdvisor implemented the Like button, as did a host of other brands, including CNN, ESPN and a couple of dozen more.
TripAdvisor has not relegated the Like button to hotels only, but has installed it for cities, attractions and restaurants, too.
The Like button has been rolled out on TripAdvisor.com for now, and a spokesman says there is no news to report on expansion to any other country sites yet.
“Integration between the world’s most popular and largest travel community and the world’s most popular and largest social networking site is a natural fit benefiting both brands,” says Adam Medros, TripAdvisor’s vice president of product. “We think our members will enjoy sharing their Likes across sites and with a wide range of their friends and connections. Additionally, the hotels, cities, attractions and restaurants featured on the TripAdvisor site will also benefit from increased exposure.”
You gotta Like it — or not.
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For the dislike there always remains the review process, but yes like on my TiVo remote, it would be great to have a dislike button as well, or like again on TiVo, one that you can click up to three times for emphasis either up or down.
Another way for sounding off is, of course, Google SideWiki that hasn’t been receiving a lot of attention lately which allows for comments which a simple button does not.
Congratulations on the early launch and announcement Adam!
Like!
Excellent points Dennis – especially the lack of direct SEO impact. Appears the large sites will reap the benefits.
From the work I have done with collaborative filtering, it seems having 7 buckets – neutral, with 3 positive & 3 negative tiers provides the ideal range of categories to start making reliable, actionable recommendations. I believe Amazon uses 5 tiers, but they are very specific on identifying the exact product being rated.
Similarly, if you look at music, ratings may be applied to an artist, an album, or a song – one like does not fit all and one can get into trouble interpreting that “Like” without understanding the context.
For travel, an additional variable will be an individual’s travel persona applied to a particular itinerary. A “Like” for a family vacation hotel may not be relevant for a business trip or a romantic getaway.
That to me is the real key.
I won’t even dive into the various hotel attributes – rooms, dining, recreation, service, etc. that could receive widely varying ratings that a general “Like” does not reveal.
The like button is a good start, but it may result in some gross generalizations that actually may undermine the relevance of search until various degrees of “Like” or “Dislike” are identified.
This is another example of the continued “frenemization” of Facebook. While having a one-way Like who’s merits can be debated on several levels as mentioned above isn’t perfect, enabling this functionality (and potential upside) with such bare bones code is a no brainer for most sites.
But it remains to be seen how long the power of the news feed actually lasts. If FB can balance 3rd party Likes along with Spamville updates and the occasional inappropriate joke from my dad, the news feed effect will not only be around a long time but accomplish FB’s goal of universal multi-platform ubiquity.
Robert – you are right on, this is the whole challenge with Trip Advisor, what someone Likes is totally based on their objectives (and standards) which may, or may not, match mine. Why hasn’t this issue been solved yet? Someone has to do it, is there a reason that’s not Trip Advisor?
Not sure if my earlier comment vanished to the depths of the internet…
Bruce, that’s a good question. We asked that back in 2006 and didn’t understand why it’s not done. Thus we founded TripSay to answer that question. The value of a review is questionable at best if you don’t know anything about the reviewer or his preferences. That why we profile our users and their actions extensively and use collaborative filtering to match the users with the most interesting content and other users.
Robert mentioned that having a 7 tier rating offers the best results for collaborative filtering. We’ve tweaked our filtering for three years now and have tried many different things. We’ve ended up with a 3 tier rating (hate, been there, love). On top of that we use a lot of other data we get when people use the site. It provides us with pretty good results. On top of that it’s easy for people to use and it can be used to describe our users to each other when they are trying to see if they should believe the tips from a certain traveler or not. Love and hate are strong preferences and are thus important. If something is OK+ or OK- it’s not really worth telling about to others. Been there is a good enough rating for those.
All in all this is a really interesting subject and one of the biggest issues in online travel today I think. Not just to the travelers but to the vendors as well. Their sites leave consumers alone to browse through the data they have a show everyone the same stuff. Not really customer friendly or good service. Something they were able to offer in their brick and mortar stores.
Facebook Connect and Like has not worked on TripAdvisor since Thursday… or is it just me?
This is a big big real-estate grab for Trip Advisor. All hotels should want that Like button to go to *their* websites, not the TA page. It will be interesting to see the business model of this play out. Question: is there anything in the terms of service with FB that would prevent Trip Advisor from charging a fee for pointing the like button to a hotel’s site vs their TA page? I would certainly be willing to at least consider it…