The team at Tripl, had a month back, decided to shift away focus from linking travelers with friends who are close by, undergoing mini-pivot, where they now put together infographic of friends’ travel history, complete with fun facts, imagery, and maps. And now, the company has again decided to redo the new iOS app that they had been working on for months. This onboard change would test users’ patience a little. Here, Tripl asks users to log in with Facebook to let the app start the search for social connections and pull in information about the travel plans of friends. Tripl also connects with other social sites such as Foursquare, Instagram and Tripit and takes a little time to connect. Luckily, the app also has a feature to let users press push notifications button so it can buzz as the process completes to notify users. After the completion of this process, Tripl is really fun to use. As users log in, they are welcomed with a streamlined view of friends’ locations. They can also pop into stories or individual entries, where users can see pictures taken from a particular location. And that is not all. Users can also “love” the story, leave jealous comments, or bookmark locations that seem worth checking out down the line. In case someone checks in to a location with no picture, the app is designed to plot the place on a map and offer some geographical context by default. The application looks rather interesting, with so many features to interest users. The visual that fills the service’s web app makes it colorful and interesting. Little touches such as a distance indicator that shows how far friends are from home completes the package. This image-heavy app looks great on an iPad thanks to all that additional screen real estate. Just like others, this app also has some flaws. There is no way that lets users see all of a friend’s travel stories in a list. And users cannot even take look at list of likely vacation spots that they earlier bookmarked. Even with these little points, the app hopes to cover all points as it updates and ensures to make an impressive mark on all users.
