Picture This: Gogobot Launches Striking Redesign That Transforms Friends' Travels Into Your Own Interactive Travel Magazine

SAN FRANCISCO, July 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Gogobot (http://www.gogobot.com), the world's leading source of trusted travel advice, today launches a redesign of its award-winning service that gives users a magazine-style experience to inspire them with travel suggestions from friends and like-minded people, and enable even easier trip planning.

Since the January 2011 launch of Gogobot's popular, photo-driven passport feature, the company has pioneered visual browsing. The new features, which showcase striking pictures and original content from Gogobot members rather than anonymous sources, bring travel advice to life in the most engaging way. Users can browse through a visual stream of photos, postcards and reviews from their friends' travels, as well as editorially featured content from around the world, in the same way they might flip through the pages of a travel magazine. What sets it apart from a typical travel glossy is that 1) When users see something that piques their interest, with a click they can add that place to their wishlist or their Gogobot passport 2) If they want to learn more, they can click through to view more photos and read reviews from other travelers, as well as find practical details such as the history, hours of operation, phone numbers, maps 3) And they can research and book nearby hotels and restaurants – making it a discovery tool that lets anyone go from dreaming about a summer excursion to actually planning and booking the trip.

"Gogobot is becoming an interactive travel magazine curated by your friends and travelers like you, with information on everything from restaurants to hotels to attractions," said Gogobot CEO and co-founder Travis Katz. "Gogobot is unique in its ability to not only inspire you with beautiful and highly relevant travel advice, but allow you to take the ideas you have and use them to plan a perfect trip. Other services present a lot of pretty photos, but they lack helpful details and planning features, and all too quickly the inspiration is replaced by the perspiration of trying to arrange a trip."

Gogobot, which recently surpassed the 1 million registered user milestone, is the fastest growing social travel service, with a new member joining every 15 seconds. Overall member growth has exploded 65x year-on-year and users have shared more than 8 million places on the service to date. With Gogobot, every user has a unique, personalized experience because the service automatically sorts photos and reviews of hotels, restaurants, and attractions based on their popularity in each member's personal network, rather than on information provided by anonymous strangers. 

Katz was inspired to launch the service to solve the problems he encountered when planning trips and holidays. Instead of relying on guidebooks, the web, or queries to friends or colleagues about places that they could recommend, Gogobot members get trusted advice from friends and their wider social circle via Facebook and Twitter. Gogobot uses social tools to provide every user with a unique, personalized experience. Katz's Gogobot travel passport can be seen at http://www.gogobot.com/user/travis-katz

Named one of TIME magazine's 50 Best Websites of 2011, Gogobot is the first social travel service that leverages social media to help protect users from review fraud. 92 percent of Gogobot users connect to the service using their real identities via Facebook. As they browse reviews, Gogobot allows them to easily see their shared connections to anyone on the service, ensuring that users are confident they are reading a real review from a real person. By allowing users to tap their universe of friends and associates on Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter for personal advice and reviews, Gogobot has built a reliable, easy, fun and now even more visually striking way to plan a trip, share memories and photos with friends, or dream about the next travel adventure.

Gogobot for iPhone and iPod Touch is available for free from the App Store at: http://itunes.apple.com/app/gogobot/id459590827. For more information, go to http://www.gogobot.com.

About Gogobot
Gogobot is the world's most popular source of trusted travel advice from people like you. Launched in November 2010 and named one of TIME magazine's 50 Best Websites of 2011, Gogobot was the first travel company to refocus online travel planning on friends, not strangers. By allowing people to tap into their personal networks on Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter for personal advice and reviews, Gogobot has helped millions of people create, share and enjoy extraordinary travel experiences. As a result, Gogobot works with global partners - including Expedia, Hotels.com, Kayak and Priceline - that enable users to book their travel directly from the site. Gogobot is available on the web, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Whether you are seeking advice on the best hotels in Las Vegas, tips for visiting Walt Disney World or reviews of things to do in New York City, Gogobot offers advice you can trust from people like you.

Gogobot has raised $19 million, more funding than all other companies in the sector combined, from leading venture investors, including Battery Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and Innovation Endeavors. Gogobot is headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, with an office in London.

Contact for U.S.
Mark de la Vina
Consort Partners
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +1 415-282-4795

Contact for Europe
James Gilheany
Speed Communications
Email: [email protected] 
Phone: +44 20 7842 3210

SOURCE Gogobot