Cheapflights.com sets up travel community using Ning
July 15, 2008
Is US price comparison site Cheapflights.com doing what folks have long speculated metasearch sites would do, and making a big commitment to content? Specifically, community user-generated content?
Well, in as far as that it has set up its Flights and Travel Forum at all, yes.
But the news that it is using Ning hints at toes being dipped in the water (not that this is a criticism, since the usefulness of social networking in a metasearch context is unproven).
Ning's core network-building service is free. It then offers premium services for a monthly fee. By the looks of it Cheapflights.com has bought:
- Ad control ($19.95pcm)
- Removal of Ning's promotional links ($7.95pcm)
It seems to have left the custom URL option - $4.95pcm, plus the yearly cost of hiring a domain - on the shelf, sticking with the ungainly cheapflights.ning.com.
Based on that, we can speculate that the service itself is costing Cheapflights.com $334.80 a year.
Presumably there will have been a one-off design cost, plus ongoing resource costs associated with site monitoring, and we can't speculate about those; but my impression is that Cheapflights.com sees in Ning a low-cost way to try out UGC.
A few questions strike me:
- If this is successful, will Cheapflights.com look for a more sophisticated platform, such as Offexploring's white label product, which I recently profiled in Travolution?
- Given that it has no inventory of its own to integrate with the network, would there be any call for it to spend money on a more powerful tool than Ning?
- Will Cheapflights.co.uk develop a network of its own?
Nathan Midgley
Comments (4)
Hi Nathan,
Er - Ning is quite powerful really..... they were a platform provider first - then they built a social network as a product on their own platform.
We run 2 Ning travel sites:
Small Fish Big Ocean
TourCMS community
Although we haven't started to play with the platform behind the scenes too much....
Therefore not sure why you think they would have to leave once they get bigger.... they just need to make more use of the Ning platform.
Alex
Posted by Alex Bainbridge | July 15, 2008 4:30 PM
Posted on July 15, 2008 16:30
Hi Alex,
Always good to have your comments on this stuff. I knew Ning was pretty flexible but it's interesting to hear you built those sites on it too.
I suppose I was wondering about a closer integration between the new community site and Cheapflights itself - managing the same ad inventory across both, allowing users of the community to start a search without having to go 'out' to Cheapflights, that sort of thing. Would you say ning has any limitations on that front? (Assuming CF would want to go in that direction, which is by no means certain.)
Nathan
Posted by Nathan Midgley
|
July 15, 2008 8:46 PM
Posted on July 15, 2008 20:46
It just seems like they are joining the bandwagon of sites which now have forms. This is especially true in the travel field, after all unique relevant content is essential for sites success for google and for customers.
Posted by Niall Buchanan | July 17, 2008 8:26 PM
Posted on July 17, 2008 20:26
@Niall - yes, it's par for the course in travel, but it isn't par for the course in travel metasearch. Those sites have traditionally been very light on content. As you say, unique content is a big traffic driver and that's one of the reasons why it's interesting to see a metasearch site moving in that direction.
Posted by Nathan Midgley | July 18, 2008 12:34 PM
Posted on July 18, 2008 12:34