TripIt at TechCrunch40 and Open for Business

Today was another milestone day for TripIt.  We were flattered to be invited to present at the TechCrunch40 conference today.  What a blast!  We also announced that we have removed the “invite only” restrictions and our beta site is now open for business.  Now, anyone can email their travel confirmations to plans[at]tripit.com to start creating master itineraries and sharing their travel plans.

Over the last few months we’ve been incredibly fortunate to have a beta test group that now numbers in the thousands giving us feedback.  In response to this feedback, today we also released a huge number of enhancements and bug fixes, including:

• We've refreshed our look in an effort to more easily help people understand what TripIt is all about.  What do you think of our snappy new logo?
• TripIt now supports iCalendar so you can sync your TripIt location stream into calendar tools like Outlook2007 and Google calendar.  More to come in this area.
• TripIt is starting to support microformats by tagging our “MyFriends” page and more pages coming.  If you have not installed a microformat reader, try one.  It's starting to be very useful.  (I use Operator from Mozilla Labs.)
• We’ve made major improvements to the places covered by our locations database. 
• TripIt now supports over 70 travel sites, with nearly full coverage of major US sites and increasing coverage around the world.  (We’ve been surprised at how many non-US users have found us and participated in our private beta.  For you non-US users, please continue to be patient with us as we are work to make TripIt less US-centric for things like date formats, character recognition, etc.)
• We’re starting to make smarter use of the information you give TripIt in little ways like remembering who you have contacted previously.  More to come in this area too.
• We revamped our flight entry process to make it much faster.

I would like to give a heartfelt “thank you” to our private beta user group and our very tired development team led by co-founder Andy Denmark.

It's hard to believe that less than one year ago TripIt was just a neat idea and now we're opening up to the world.  Makes me wonder what will happen over the next year.  One thing is for certain, it's sure to be an exciting trip!

- Gregg

Comments

[Moses]

Just had a look at the demo and TripIt looks great. Not sure about the business model, but the service looks like a winner for consumers.

[Nicole Simon]

Well, most companies would be surprised how many users are out there outside of the US and willing to use such a service if they just would try. ;o)

Especially in regard to flight bookings from not yet covered airlines it would be great to have an idea who to point where to integrate them in your service.

Any chances for Microformats to be integrated for easy import and such? That would really help move it forward.

[Colin]

Can't wait to try this out. I take TONS of trips w/ friends across the country and this just might be perfect for us. I'll let you know my experience. Best of luck you guys.

[rochelle]

Congrats! Have you guys thought about including info from where.com? How about opentable.com? How about simpatigo.com? That could be real helpful.

Keep up the good work!
RR