Travel companies should be cautious about linking up with social networking sites, according to online experts.
Several speakers at the TTI conference on Web 2.0 warned that the high valuations put on social networking sites in recent acquisitions had encouraged many more start-ups.
In October 2006 youtube was acquired by google for US$1.65 billion.
FastFutures chief executive Rohit Talwar it was difficult to see which sites were here to stay and which had been set up just to sell on.
“The potential to sell the content is enormous if you build enough visitors and enough interaction between them,” he said.
Where Are You Now co-founder and director Jerome Touze also questioned whether the Web 2.0 and social networking phenomenon would die out as with the dot.com boom.
“What happens if what we’re seeing now goes back to 2001. Is it going to be Web 2.0 or bubble 2.0,” he said.
Touze added that there were so many Web 2.0 companies trying to capitalise on the trend and that people were starting to get fed up with the idea of communities.
By Linda Fox
