Group/Travel organision sites on a (cash) roll: Dopplr

The money and VC interest in group and travel organisational tools is rolling in faster than I can type. We have touched recently on the latest for Groople, a round for Kango, Ex-Expedia staff pouring into TripHub and early on an interview with Travelgator. That latest to join this trend is the Helsinki based Dopplr who announced on their blog an angle round of funding from Martin Varsavsky (who also backed Ya.com including viajar.com), Joichi Ito (serial entrepreneur who's investments include Technorati and Last.fm), Reid Hoffman (the father or linkedin) and The Accelerator Group led by Saul Klein (former Skype senior exec).

Again we have a deep in private beta site so cannot tell you what they do but the description follows this trend we have been tracking around group travel and online organisational tools.

"Dopplr lets you, via an invitation system, share your future travel plans with a group of trusted fellow travellers whom you have chosen. It also reminds you of friends and colleagues who live in the cities you’re planning to visit. For example, Dopplr might tell you that three of your trusted friends and colleagues will be in Barcelona when you are there next."

Founding staff are Lisa Sounio, CEO; Matt Biddulph, CTO Matt Jones, design director; and Dan Gillmor, "founding traveller" (not sure what that means).

Not sure how to put my head around this trend yet. The growth of enhanced organisational and collaboration tools fit with my theory that we are moving into a period of online travel where consumers are confronted with too much information and need ways to digest, understand, share and manage it all. But I had anticipated that this collaboration would initially come out of the large scale social networks (MySpace, Facebook, Bebo etc) or out of tools from the large OTAs, not niche product specific providers because travel organisation would form part of a consumers general online social interaction or online travel purchasing behaviour. Now I begin to wonder if we are moving to world where these niche providers can either stand on their own or connect to social networks as applications or connect to the OTAs through distribution deals. A lot more to think about and track in this area. Would be interested in your thoughts.

Thanks to the new UK version of paidContenthere I first saw this story.

UPDATE - TechCrunch are also carrying the story and provide a screen shot of someone's page on the private beta and a link to an InviteShare page with (maybe) some invitations to the Dopplr private beta (login required).

UPDATE 2 - alarm:clock have brief little piece called TripLife vs. Dopplr vs. TripUp