THE VISION, Travel Mashery – http://travelst...gybusiness.com/

THE PRODUCT, Mashlabs.Travel 2.0 Portal Builder – http://travelst...portal-builder/

Good write-up Erick.

http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com

@Yen: Nice response to the copyright issues dealing with content acquisition.

A number of readers of raised the question, “What another travel site?” The answer was given in the opening paragraph: “It’s an $87 billion market!”

I hope that Kango has a secret sauce that will enable them to create additional revenue streams!

@Sam and @Nicola, good question. Our site handles copyrighted works the same way that Google, Yahoo!, and other search engines do. We are indexing the whole story from a third party website but only displaying a small snippet of the story. And we are fully attributing and providing links and traffic to the source. And we respect robots.txt just like Google and other search engines. Given we are following commonly accepted internet practices, our lawyers give us a clean bill of health. @Ashish, good answer!

@The Random Act. We think there is big opportunity to better connect travelers with those small, great sites that might not ever be found in a general web search engine. That is why we think personalization is key…so we can help people express their intent and get more unique travel Websites. BTW please contact us so we can get you in our catalog!

@Eric Tilenius. Thanks for the vote of confidence. Mum’s the word on the other investors please!

@Scott. We like TripIt too. I’ve known Gregg for years and I think organizing after you’ve booked is a key need and complementary to the travel ecosystem.

@Gilltots. Nice breakdown of “where to go” vs. “what specifically to do when I get there”. We think there are even better ways to solve this than what’s out there today.

@phenom. Our public beta will be based on the feedback we get from consumers during private beta. If you have time, could you sign up for private beta and give us your feedback please?

http://vidsonly.blogspot.com

Travel is about dreaming and escaping your everyday life. If I get what these guys are trying to do, it can only be helpful to the consumer to find sites that they never would be able to with mainstream search. Also, it gives the little sites the ability to compete for the consumer with the massive engines if they make their content searchable.

i think the more likely use case is “i’d really love to go to hawaii, but which island should i spend the most time on? and what should i do there?” – and tripadvisor pretty much nails that use case – they let you read other people’s experiences, see what’s worth doing and whats not, what to pass on and what you shouldn’t miss.

oh and tripadvisor actually comes up with their own content, too, instead of just gimping it.

Don’t forget about TripIt, the only travel site included in TechCrunch 40. After you get your advice and then book, TripIt (http://www.tripit.com) organizes everything into a single, master itinerary. We’re lightly touching on the semantic web by extracting meaning from purchase confirmation emails you forward to plans@tripit.com.

What I love about Kango — in addition to a truly amazing team they’ve assembled — is that they are addressing what I feel is a huge open need in travel: the ability to really get great advice and ideas around what will personally work for YOU.

Sure, if you know you want to go to Vegas, there are a million sites that let you rate and review hotel rooms.

But what if you are planning your honeymoon and want someplace romantic but also adventurous, and you want to figure out the best adventures and you love mountains? Or what if you have kids and you want the best family-friendly places where you can hire a chef and nanny locally? There’s no travel site I’m aware of yet that can really give good advice on WHERE to go and let you evaluate very different options.

Also, personalized advice and itineraries are huge. For my honeymoon, one of the best things was a friend gave us the itinerary he had put together, along with comments on what he loved or didn’t love about each place, where to go, etc.

No travel sites right now let users effectively search out gems like this. Kango has the potential to change that.

I think ultimately, these guys have a killer team who will really listen and evolve the site based on what users want, along with a fantastic vision for a missing element of travel: getting personal insights across a broader spectrum of travel options… the “travel guide” market for specific locations is a crowded space, but the overall universe of where to travel to based on user content is hardly tapped.

Stay tuned and give it a try. I think you’ll really like what they’ve put together and more importantly give them feedback — this is a team that will evolve and ultimately create a huge new play in travel.

Just my (admittedly biased) two cents… I totally think Kango will rock!!