TripIt Blog

TripIt nabs Best User Experience at Yahoo! Hack Day

I'm Will Aldrich, TripIt's VP of Product, and I spent last weekend with Andy, Jacques, and Ryan from TripIt at Yahoo!'s Open Hack Day. We joined hundreds of other developers to build on Yahoo!’s open platforms…and eat lots of donuts.

We had a clear idea of what kind of hack we wanted to build—something that makes it even easier to get travel confirmation emails into TripIt. So, when we arrived early Friday morning, we made a beeline for the Yahoo! Open Mail team to get set-up with their pre-alpha API.

We were able to make quick progress. By Friday night Andy and Jacques had the basics of our hack working. Andy showed it off on Saturday afternoon and when the dust settled, the judges awarded us "Best Yahoo! Mail App" and "Best User Experience." Sweet! (We were in good company. The other Yahoo! Mail hack—from Xoopit—won Best Overall Hack. Congrats, guys!)

Big thanks go to Mark, Stephanie, Mary, and the whole Open Mail team. You guys are on to something big. Also, Eric Wu, Neal Sample, Havi Hoffman, and the whole Hack team at Yahoo! for running such a cool event.

We’re big in… Singapore!

We always love seeing people from all around the world using TripIt, but this one is a special treat.  A friend who was connecting in Singapore airport recently saw TripIt mentioned in the airport’s glossy lifestyle magazine, Changi Class, so he picked it up and sent it to me.  There we are, right up front on page 7, described as a “Wow Travel” site.
 
I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, as Singapore is a hub for international travelers who can surely benefit from TripIt’s abilities to keep you organized, particularly when visiting foreign lands.  But still, it’s pretty cool to see that they are writing about TripIt on the other side of the world!

How Do We Make Money?

OK, so most of our blog posts to date have been pretty serious.  We're telling you about product features, sharing perspectives on the online travel landscape, and stuff like that.

Well it's time to lighten up a bit.  In the past couple of weeks since our public launch, we've received a ton of email complimenting us on the TripIt product, but lots of people ask "how do you make money?"  Some people have said they would be willing to pay for TripIt, or at least pay for some additional features they'd like us to add.  While we're flattered by that, we have no intentions of charging individuals to use TripIt.  Like many other successful online businesses, we plan to make money through advertising services that would be useful to travelers. 

But, every time we get an email with "how do you make money" I am very tempted to respond according to a very funny SNL skit I saw many years ago -- "volume."  It's too hard to explain here, so just watch the video and you'll know what I mean.  I hope you get a good chuckle out of this.  And thanks to Andy Denmark for helping me finally track this down on YouTube!

Scott