DISQUS

lol @ "i mean, what if i just want to talk about my feelings, and what i ate for breakfast?" that's like the essence of cat.

we'll buy the dvd when you come to beijing.

I am just a user. The people who founded the site are friends, and I showed the post to Eric when he was at my house. He used my computer to leave a post. The site is not about "data gathering," but I'll stop arguing with you since you don't seem to understand that.

It's not my site, but I am a user. It's impossible to tell what the concept of a site is until you use it, especially in the case of social networking sites. That seems pretty obvious to me.

I just don't think it's responsible to throw around statements like "here is a company that is not rising to the challenge" without using the site first. It's hard to take your criticism seriously if it's grounded in cursory glances and bombastic rhetoric.

Actually, I think you've missed the point. I don't think TravBuddy.com's marketing approach is "come to my site and give me data," I think it markets itself as a social networking site for travelers. TravBuddy and travelocity are completely different sites-- travelocity is for booking travel, whereas TravBuddy is for sharing travel experiences with friends. All social networking sites operate on the marketing approach you describe as "come to my site and give me data," and they've been very successful-- take yelp.com, facebook.com, and myspace.com as examples.