Dirk Loew, our Exciting Travel author and editor, posted recently on the startup planely.com. The company mixes online and offline worlds in an interesting way and facilitates face-to-face meetings between people who will be sharing the same flight.
The goal of the Copenhagen based start-up was summarized by CEO Nick Martin as follows:
“Our mission is to have millions of meetings happen that wouldn't have been possible if it was left to luck. We know that when great people get together and have real-world conversations then unexpectedly amazing things happen. We want to help as many of those amazing things come about as possible!”
On the technical side, planely.com pulls flight schedule info from an external company – planely has no access to the databases of the airlines and not even the seating plans. The website is currently only available in English. Other languages as well as a mobile phone app are in planning and should be implemented as quickly as possible. A Facebook presence is already in place.
Once registered and logged in, the service is easy to use: Users search their flights and wait for matching persons on the same flight. According to CEO Nick Martin, planely.com is enjoying a 30% monthly growth rate for registered users, with the strongest demographics from the USA and Europe. Users from Asia and Australia are also represented.
Users can log in with their Facebook IDs and see the status of their networking in LinkedIn.
However: planely.com has yet to come up with a business model. The service is currently free. Potential revenue streams could be a pay for use premium service (profile details, fee-based App, etc.) or a CPC/CPL agreement with a third party website such as seatguru.com.
The service could also be useful for airlines: They would be able to offer guests a way to meet interesting people on their flights and that also worldwide, mobile and on very short notice.
This seems to be a trend for the future as well as a success factor for social networking initiatives: digital connected to real - Get familiar online via your network, and then meet in the real world.
Originally posted in German by Dirk Loew on the Exciting Travel blog, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.
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