Sydney, Australia, 25 January, 2011.
Former Australian sports star Todd Byrne creates iphone app to solve the problem of lack of trust in online travel reviews.
‘The Clique’ lets users provide their exclusive social network with trusted, reliable and immediate travel advice via posts and integration with Facebook. This puts to an end to the annoyance of relying on travel reviews written anonymously or by strangers when searching for trustworthy online travel information.
"I had the idea coming home from playing in England. My girlfriend and I were looking for a hotel in Bangkok and we ended up in a dump after following advice from various travel websites. Upon returning home, I discovered a mate had been traveling Bangkok two months before. I thought, 'usually my friends are the first people I ask when I travel local or overseas... Imagine if I could immediately access their recommendations?’
The application offers an easy-to-use and immediately accessible platform, taking design inspiration from the former creator of NexGen Gaming, one of the USA's biggest gaming companies, Dave Lewis.
"I'd had this same idea floating around my head. I hate having to rely on reviews by people that are just so off the mark or clearly rubbish. This way I know exactly what people I trust think, and even more importantly, it gives me perspective: if I know one of my friends doesn't like action movies and I do, I'll probably take his review with a pinch of salt. So when I spoke with Todd, I was keen to help him create this specifically for our social circle."
Australian Internet Guru Ed Dale says a shift to sharing between only those in your social circle is emerging. "Today people are bombarded by information. Online, tv, radio, print, it just keeps coming and we just can't keep up with it all. We're so time poor that we have to be choosey about what we consume. This is leading to consumers who don't want or need to know what everyone on the planet thinks or does. We are moving away from that big busy, global market and going back to the village community where you rely on only those that you know."
The Clique is free in the app store. For further information visit: http://www.thecliqueapp.com.
The Clique features:
*Integration with Facebook and Google Places
*Ability to review in hindsight
*Elegant User Interface
*Slider to easily move from friend to friend
