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Comment by bruceb | Hacker News Reader

I am actually surprised the travel industry isn't on facebook more. How many more travel pics do we see now then before fb?

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The thought occurred during a recent vacation I took: if I tried to show my friends and family my vacation photos after the trip it would be a classic sitcom groan moment, but by posting during the trip I get past their defenses. Their need to compulsively 'like' things kicks in, and they unwittingly view the whole trip anyway.

The medium is the message - it's the context that changes the meaning.

Sitting everyone down for pictures is almost gloating; but when you remove the obligations, people's desires to be nice, helpful and curious kick in so they take a look and click like.

But yeah, I'm surprised that companies involved in travel aren't all over social media. My only guess is that it might be difficult to change the messaging from "travel is exciting" to "travel with Xyz travels pty ltd is exciting" because of the industry's commoditization.

Some travel-related companies are "all over social media". Tripadvisor had some success with their FB apps showing "cities I've visited" etc.

To be honest, it's just that social media already does most of the job for them, for free (travelers post pictures on their own, nowadays even tagging the location or establishment), so why push it?

Because you want people to link directly to the trip or vacation or hotel or airline that they used. People usually don't mention it, they mention the destination.

I've found that a lot of people are using Facebook to share airline deals with each other.

I actually think it has more to do with dosing the time out over a week. I'll happily commit a few minutes a few times a day to looking at some cool photos. Ask me to sit down for an hour? Sorry, I have to return some videotapes.

It's more than that. If I demand to show you my vacation slides, I'm taking your time on my schedule. If I put pictures up on facebook, you can browse them at your own leisure, and there's no demand on my part involved.

Sounds like its something they don't really want to see, and that you have to trick them (even innocently as here) about it.

So why even show it to them in the first place?

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