TLabs Showcase on travel startups featuring Australia-based trip planning and social network TraceMyTrip.
Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?
TraceMyTrip is a social network for travellers where people can book trips, store photos, videos and journals, and create maps. It also provides guides and live travel information anywhere in the world.
The site launched in December, and we’ve had 1.5 million people register in just four months.
Ryan Adams, founder of TraceMyTrip, is a keen traveller. While overseas in Java, Â Indonesia, Ryan kept in touch with family and friends back home with a personal blog and kept daily journals including photos and videos.
After returning home he started a small web development firm  and spent his spare time in front of a computer developing what would later become TraceMyTrip.
TraceMyTrip is now run by a small team based in South Australia.
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
Other than personal funds and a lot of time, a small private investment was made to get the social network off the ground for the first 6 months.
What problem are you trying to solve?
Travellers need simple solutions for photo storing, socialising, and to access to up-to-date travel information. They want something easy, fast and fun to use, but it must be secure and private.
Internet time is often limited for travellers, so having a one-stop-shop for all their online travel needs is critical.
TraceMyTrip is a social network that lets travellers stay connected to family back home, or catch up with friends on the road.
We offer a single, secure location with a range of customisable services so people can use the site to do exactly what they want, quickly and easily.
Describe the business, core products and services?
Registration is free, and offers travellers the following services:
- Mapping. People can map their journey to share their current location, where they’ve been and where they are going. Integrated in the system is live flight management. Itineraries with flight numbers and directions from airport to hotel can be printed from the site.
- Photo and video storage. TraceMyTrip stores photos and videos at the same resolution as captured by camera and offers a high speed upload rate. People can print out albums, scrapbooks and happy snaps when they get home, or just download files for safekeeping.
- Bookings. Flights, tours, cruises, and accommodation can be booked from the site at competitive rates.
- Information sharing. Users can create a journal or blog to share with friends. There’s also real-time chat, travel advisories and destination guides.
Who are your key customers and users at launch?
Our key market are people aged 18 to 30 who are travelling or intend to travel in the near future. The wide range of services means it has appeal to both business travellers and backpackers. Digital nomads are a major market for us.
Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?
Yes. We ran trials with travellers and extensive market testing for six months, and received positive feedback from users. That told us the idea works, helped us fine tune the concept, and gave us something to show to potential investors.
What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?
TraceMyTrip has many strategies for revenue such as:
- A specifically designed geo-located pay per click advertising platform.
- Online travel agents.
- Subscription services to be launched in the near future.
SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
Strengths:
- TraceMyTrip is adaptive, and can add and change features on the site to match what our users want. We can deliver high speed and efficient content around the globe.
Weaknesses:
- Although TraceMyTrip can be accessed on mobile platforms, we are lacking several apps which could add value to the site.
Opportunities:
- We can offer geographically targeted content to our users and partners, keeping location-specific advertising is relevant. TraceMyTrip has potential to become a widely recognised brand for travellers.
Threats:
- Larger organisations becoming potential competitors.
Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?
It’s easy for others to say an idea won’t work, but you don’t know until you try it. Entrepreneurship is about balancing risks with benefits.
Several people pointed out the difficulties in building an initial membership base and standing out from existing social networks.
However, through online marketing TraceMyTrip membership has grown quickly. We reached over a million members in under four months and are continuing to expand our user base and services.
What is your success metric 12 months from now?
In 12 months, we hope to reach six million active users around the globe.
NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.
How can a site explode to 1.5 million users in such a short time but only have an Alexa.com ranking of 2.3 million?
And only 9 Facebook likes?
Curious.
I just signed up to have a look around and work out how you got so many people registered in such a short time.
I’m user number 160. Huh?
Where are the 1.5 million people who registered?
Wow 1.5 million people registering in the first 4 months of launch…. that’s better than Facebook. Funny that when I created a profile and had a browse through that no photos were uploaded in the last 2 days (out of all your 1.5 million members)
You might want to reconsider outrageous claims next time…
All: I’ve asked TraceMyTrip to come by and respond to some of the points raised here…
Hi TLabs readers, and thanks for your interest in the site.
We are just as surprised as you with the response we’ve had in such a short period of time. Although we only have a small amount of likes on Facebook, we believe that is because we have only recently added this feature. To answer some of your questions specifically:
Peter: Not sure where you got the 160 number, as our users aren’t given numbers that are displayed on profiles.
Jerome: We take privacy very seriously, and our users can toggle security settings so their photos, journals and maps are not available to the public. Almost all our users do this, so new images usually don’t often appear on public pages, though they are still on the site.
Hope this clears up any confusion around the TraceMyTrip network. Thanks for bringing your concerns to our attention, we appreciate feedback.
It’s not the default URL, but if you click on the “View my profile” link, it loads the userID (have to be logged in to see it)
http://www.tracemytrip.com/profile/160 – that’s me!
Loading up a few other pages:
http://www.tracemytrip.com/profile/2 (yourself – signed up March 2?)
http://www.tracemytrip.com/profile/168 (doesn’t exist)
167 does exist. Looks like 7 people have signed up since I did yesterday morning.
It’s like we’re talking about an entirely different site… or perhaps you’re referring to the “hits” to your site, or page views (though even that I find very hard to believe) or something like that?
A site with 1.5 million registered users would have a lot more evidence of activity.
Login required to see these:
me: http://www.tracemytrip.com/profile/160
you: http://www.tracemytrip.com/profile/2
the most recent user: http://www.tracemytrip.com/profile/167
I know a user ID when I see one.
I just signed up (ianc) and my profile is here:
http://tracemytrip.com/profile/170
(And no, I’m not a girl as the profile pic suggests!)
C’mon Ryan stop pulling our leg…
I just posted a blog entry and it’s only the 2nd “public” entry. If you sign out and look here:
http://www.tracemytrip.com/blog
Even on your homepage there is no ‘Recent Activity’.
I think it’s about time to come clean mate..
My mum’s blog that she started yesterday has a higher alexa ranking
guid : ‘user_171′
‘identity’ : 171,
I guess they’ve already reached 1.7m million users – you just need to append four zeros to the user id number.
Good luck with it.
I think 1.5m users is doable if the site is cleverly embedded into something like Facebook but it doesn’t look like it is. I mean, by Ryan’s own admission states they’ve only recently added the ‘like’ feature!
There isn’t even a product tour, the site just asks me to sign up without explaining in detail what it does.
And, for site boasting that many users I would expect their Twitter follower count to be well into the tens of thousands (if not more).
Anyway, Ryan should count himself lucky that there aren’t really 1.5m users with free accounts as the overhead would be colossal. You’d have to have very deep pockets to support that level of activity. Just look at the eye-watering figures for a community like Couch Surfing:
http://www.couchsurfing.org/donation/where_does_the_money_go
But, for me, the true genius in the site is its name. There are so many travel sites called trip this or trip that, so to append the word trip to the end of the URL already sets it apart from the crowd.
Ryan, loved your ‘Heartbreaker’ album. Don’t give up your day job
All: I have asked Ryan Adams to respond to the specific points raised again, especially the assertion that the site has around 1.5M registrations since December.
NB: We give startups the opportunity to showcase themselves on Tnooz. We do so in the spirit that all statements are accurate or at least can be scrutinised by our readers. We feel that the Tnooz community understands the intricacies of many areas of the industry better than us, thus why we have continually used the TLabs format as it allows companies to explain their businesses thoroughly, but equally it also creates a format for debate. As demonstrated here. Keep up the good work everyone.
CouchSurfing reported “over 1 million members … as of December 2009″ (the site started in 2004, so that’s 5 years of growth). TraceMyTrip says 1.5m in 6 months. Ryan, give up TraceMyTrip, go into politics!
Dear TLabs readers
Thank you for bringing these errors to our attention. We had a hacking attempt last week and thought we had successfully cleaned all the code, now it seems we did not. We’ve taken the site offline to correct the issue. I take your concerns and criticisms very seriously, and apologise that the profile numbering has made you question our integrity. I will give a more detailed response once we know exactly what has happened, thanks for your patience.
Ryan
Quick someone, populate the database with 1.5 million records.. *sigh*
Ryan, with due respect, it’s not the ‘profile numbering’ which has made us question your integrity, it’s your assertion that you had “1.5 million people register in just four months.”
I think you need to question the integrity of your system architecture as believe me, you DON’T actually want 1.5m users right now
I receive a message saying the website is down. Anyway I would definitely be keen to learn how you received so many visitors at launch? We are launching Gunyah soon and would love to have a similar response! I did a quick search and didn’t find much except for a collection of interesting videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uesYP1yDD4
It looks like a simple typo to me. I’m pretty sure he meant to say they had 1.5 billion registered users, which is much cooler than 1.5 million. Or the hacking thing.
Ryan, I know it’s meant to be fun and light-hearted, but under the circumstances I really don’t think an image of a monkey, as currently seen on your site’s holding page, is one your brand needs to be associated with
Goodness you guys are a tough crowd
It’s not a tough crowd – it’s a passionate crowd – with entrepreneurs who have poured their hearts, souls and savings into new ventures.
So when someone comes along and makes such an outrageous claim and grabs lots of attention in the process, it’s a bit like throwing egg in our faces. What makes it worse is that you have lazy non-fact-checking Australian press re-tweeting the article “Cool Australian social travel concept….great to see innovation from Australia”. More egg in face…
Ryan also says he’s looking for investment capital, and he needs to understand that with investment capital will come something called “due diligence.” The Tnooz community hopefully has given him a dose of this.
24 hours down now.. just waiting for all the negative attention to pass perhaps?
I decided not post what I was going to post as don’t want to kick a man whilst he’s down. Ryan seems like a genuine bloke so I’m hoping he comes up with a plausible explanation to save face.
Genuine?
I tried to give Ryan the benefit of the doubt at first. But all the responses so far have just been fanning the flames creating more questions than answers.
1.5 million registrations in 4 months means we should expect at least 12,500 registrations per day to this site.
In the 24 hours after I signed up, 10 new people joined.
Boggles the mind.
Yes, when you put it like that I agree ‘genuine’ may not be the most appropriate of words
He says in the blurb above that he hopes to get 6m ‘active’ users in 12 months, but just wondering if he meant 12 years?
I was about to post “6M users in one year?!!! That far exceeds Facebook’s growth!!!” But you all beat me to it. This TLABS showcase contains the most delusional claims — ever.
This thread BETTER serve as a reality check for these guys. The casual consumer might buy this bull, but travel entrepreneurs clearly don’t — nor will investors.
Looks like they’ve shuttered the site while they regroup. Good luck.
I tried clicking the blue button, but nothing happened. Unfortunately, when you press the red button the site is still there
I’m gonna ‘try again in a few hours’ to see if anything happens.
Hey Hotel Haiku
I hear its fashionable to have a travel website that is down at unusual times
Who was it who set that trend? Ah!
Not ‘down’ as such, just closed at certain times of the day
Right now though, due to being named by the Indy as one of the 50 best travel sites, we’re open 24/7 for a little while, and tempted to keep it that way.
Haha
@Hotel Haiku – Bravo on finally making it 24/7 . Glad to have a look around it at last
@Peter – You’re welcome! Hope you like it. The site was recently featured with much enthusiasm on BBC Travel.
Anyway, I see that TraceMyTrip is back up, and looking flakier than ever
So the site is back up now but still only 10 likes on facebook and no user activity to be seen. Are they going to fess up about their little porky pie about registrations???? Me thinks not..