Share travelogues and plan trips with Qiito

There are new social networks sprouting all the time, each trying to carve a niche to build on Facebook’s popularity.

One that has been gaining traction lately, and looks quite interesting is Qiito, a service started by a team in Singapore, which lets users easily share their travelogues and plan trips for the future. It’s a little like Pinterest meets Facebook meets Trip Advisor.

Qiito works because, frankly, who doesn’t like looking at great vacation pictures? When was the last time you took a few minutes off that report you were working on to peek at some holiday photos?

Thing is, Qiito has made the interface pretty sleek. Like Pinterest, you are greeted with lots of photos when you visit the site. Each one represents a travelogue from a user, which could include text as well as photos.

It’s a simple concept, but one which seems to work because of the accessibility. Even for a Singaporean like me, I find so many places so beautifully captured. Think of Henderson Waves, the new Gardens By the Bay and even some of our famous hawker food. Yes, that’s another draw, food pictures.

I also like to see actual traveller photos of, say, a park in Taiwan before deciding to include it in my itinerary. It’s a little like checking out the hotel room photos from actual guests on Trip Advisor before booking that beach resort in Bali.

Obviously, for a travelogue, Qiito also brings in Google Maps to show people how to get the places of interest too. After seeing that picture of fish head curry at Banana Leaf Apolo restaurant in Singapore, surely you might want to know how to get there too.

Still, what’s so different from so many other social media networks appearing now?

To be honest, this is a mashup, albeit a nice one, that others could copy. How much it grows will depend on the quality of the content shared by users. Yes, content is still king, as they’ve been saying all along.

So far, the pictures on Qiito look lovely and the site has attracted more than 20,000 fans on its Facebook page, despite the online service being still in beta.

Going forward, you’d probably expect Qiito to work with some of the companies featured in the site, perhaps through advertising. Already, it is working with Taiwan’s tourism authorities to help promote some of the attractions on the island.

Do check out some of the travelogues on Qiito and let us know what you think.