Meta Search plus UGC = more than Travel 2.0

Continuing the trend of social networking - including my coverage of Sheraton's, Amadeus and Webjet's efforts (here and here) - Sidestep is buying review and blog site Travelpost.com. Here is the travelmole and eyefortravel reports. The Travelpost site is not the prettiest of sites but if the claimed 500,000 reviews, photos and blogs is true this is a deep, useful collection of content that will help Sidestep with traffic (from search engines) and conversion (by improving customer site interaction). Kayak are probably taking this deal as confirmation that their development of the "Forums" and "Buzz" features was worth it. As per yesterday this on the one hand confirms the merit of the idea of Planit for Webjet but on the other hand raises the execution pressure on Webjet (starting with the URLs) - especially where they are spending one million of hard earned shareholder dollars.