Yahoo! Inc. has announced the general availability of Trip Planner, which helps users plan their trip, create their own customized printable travel guide, as well as share their travel experiences with friends, family, and if desired, other Yahoo! Travel users. The shared Trip Plans have also been organized by Yahoo! Travel to create a growing interactive archive of personal travel experiences that can be used by others to plan their trips.

Trip Planner includes a range of features that allow travelers to document their personal travel experiences. These features provide users the ability to create photograph-rich travel journals, to plot their trip on an interactive map, as well as include notes, ratings and reviews regarding the destinations, hotels and points of interest they have visited. Together, these features allow travelers to create a comprehensive record of their travel experience that can be saved for personal archives or shared with others. Additionally, with more than 20,000 publicly viewable Trip Plans from around the world organized on an interactive map, Yahoo! Travel allows other users to research travel by learning from the trips of fellow travelers.

“The launch of Trip Planner further demonstrates Yahoo!‘s overall commitment to innovation in the field of social search and social media,” said Jasper Malcolmson, director of Yahoo! Travel. “Just as other Yahoo! social search products like Flickr, Yahoo! Answers, del.icio.us, and MyWeb have created a platform for sharing information between users, Trip Planner is about offering a way for travelers to benefit from sharing their travel experiences.”

New product features include:

  — Trip Journals - A new tool for travelers to use post-trip to
      share their travel experiences and for people to use while
      researching travel experiences. Key features include:

    — The ability to add journal entries and photos in a
        personalized format

    — Simple search function that assists other users in finding
        the most useful journal entries to help plan their travel

  — Interactive Map to Search for Trip Plans
      (http://travel.yahoo.com/trip?action=explore) - a new tool for
      travel inspiration, allowing users to visually explore Trip
      Plans across the globe on an interactive map. Key features
      include:

    — Top Trip Plans, as selected by the Yahoo! community,
        plotted on an easy-to-use interactive map

    — Dynamic pan and zoom map technology, enabling users to
        focus on and discover the Trip Plans most relevant to them

  — Yahoo! Network Integration - Trip Planner is integrated with
      several Yahoo! offerings across the network, including:

    — Yahoo! Search integration - Users can search for Trip
        Plans by entering the name of a destination and the word
        “trips” (e.g., “Las Vegas trips”) into the Yahoo! Search
        bar

    — Yahoo! Travel Guides

    — Yahoo! FareChase

  — Other features include:

    — Web clipping and tagging functionality

    — Recommendation engine from Yahoo! Travel Guides

    — Variety of printing options for take-along travel guides

    — Community feedback and comment system

    — Collaborative editing capabilities
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