Social networking via blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

I ran across an interesting piece today in Travel Weekly that certainly will serve as a "wake-up call" for travel agents. Imagine this scene....

"She is sitting on the floor in a dorm room or a bedroom with a phone in one ear, an MP3 player in the other and a notebook computer on her lap. The TV is on. Her homework is spread out all over the room. Her best friend is similarly arrayed. They are both talking, though it is not clear to whom". They are the Generation Y, switch the scenario to guys and it's Jason to a tee! Could these be tomorrow's travel agents?

Cruises Inc., the big cruise-only host agency believes they might be and it's giving them the opportunity to bring their technologies, their vast social networks and their innate talent for multitasking to the world of selling cruises. As you're reading this, they are actively recruiting this slice of the demographic pie for their unique talents - the ability to deploy various electronic devices to send and receive information simultaneously to an unlimited number of people effortlessly, while doing something else.

For these kids, there are no boundaries - they can operate from a laptop, work on the beach or at Starbucks or even lie on their sofa while watching their favorite TV show and not skip a beat. They roam effortlessly in a cloud of virtual networks so nowour industry looks due for another migration.

Travel agents have moved from their offices to their clients' offices to home offices to the internet and now on the the latest frontier of social networking media. Like it or not, this is not a passing fad and if we don't try to wrap our arms around it, we're going to be left in the dust!

You can teach an old dog some new tricks and I think even this blog has been a learning experience. Several of you are already on Facebook and have shared your photos and travel experiences. It's certainly going to take me some time for me to get up to speed on Facebook, a great place to reconnect with people you know once you learn to maneuver through the jungle.

Now many of our vendors are moving towards Twitter offering their followers special Twitter-Only sales promotions and timely news limited to 140 characters. Tweeters can also post a link to a relevant article or blog containing more in-depth information. So who is following this development?

Velma