Mfarhanonline Social Media News: When Naveen Thattil found a $40 round-trip flight between New York City and Austin on Twitter, he felt as though all of the stars had aligned in his favor. “I happened to be looking at my Twitter stream that day and the airline I happened to be following happened to tweet a deal,” he says. Luck, however, is an inefficient way to monitor travel deals, and the experience inspired Thattil to build an algorithm to replace it. His product, TripTwit , allows users to set email alerts for travel deals by destination, brand or origin city. After launching without fanfare in December, the site has gained more than two thousand users since launch — mostly through SEO efforts (Thattil’s trade) and word of mouth. Here’s how it works: At sign-up, users indicate where they’d like to go and where they’re based. They can also name brands (airlines, hotels, cruise lines, car rentals) that they’re particularly interested in. TripTwit uses this criteria to pull deals from Twitter that might interest them, and emails them a daily list of Twitter offers. The lists look like this: TripTwit finds deals by monitoring Twitter conversation surrounding them and determines the type of deal using linguistic analysis. It’s mostly an automated process and supports its minimal costs through Google ads. Other methods for finding Twitter travel deals, such as discovering and following sites that frequently tweet deals or searching for a hashtag require more effort. Sites like Wanderlisting curate Twitter accounts likely to tweet travel deals, but not deals themselves, and other sites that have taken a stab at curating Twitter deals don’t personalize them for you. TripTwit, on the other hand, has managed to create something that works like a Google alert for Twitter travel deals. “Most people I t! alk to o utside of the tech space, they're kind of unaware that there are travel deals on Twitter,” Thattil says. “With this, you don't need a Twitter account, and you don't need to worry about following people or monitoring Tweets.” More About: travel , TripTwit , Twitter For more Social Media coverage: Follow Mfarhanonline Social Media on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Social Media channel Download our free apps for Android , Mac , iPhone and iPad Social Media reviews series maintain by Mayya
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