Background: “Mark My World is a recently released mobile application which presents a novel and social way to keep track of places of interest (“Marks”) anywhere in the world, and to access and share them easily. With the app, users are able to use these Marks to plan Itineraries and create Travel Journals.”
Building upon its release in June 2016, Mark My World recently announced details of Web Share, an enhancement to its mobile app that empowers users to record details of their travel excursions and subsequently share them with friends. Whereas users were previously able to share individual “Marks” or groups of “Marks” directly with a friend, Mark My World’s Web Share functionality empowers users to share groups of Marks with a wider audience by posting a map with their selected Marks on their website or blog. Readers are then able to import any Mark or group of Marks they would like from this map, allowing them to store recommended Marks from their favorite writers on their device. For example, a Mark My World user who has travelled to Osaka, Japan, can share details of all of the restaurants and hotels that they have visited to a travel blog or website.
Available for Apple iPhone and iPad on the App Store, Mark My World enables users to identify places of interest that they have visited or would like to visit, and record details of their experiences at the location in question. One of the innovations of the app consists in the ability of users to share details about their travels with members of their Mark My World network such as friends and family. By empowering users to share data with other users in their Mark My World network, the app facilitates the “personal sourcing” of travel-related information about hotels, restaurants, parks and other locations of interest from people they know and trust. By ensuring that users receive recommendations about travel-related destinations only from individuals within their self-selected network, the app provides a medium for access to travel-related content curated by a user’s selection of users within their network, also known as “buddies.”
Maslon Barry, an avid user of Mark My World, remarked on the app’s value as follows:
Unlike other travel apps, Mark My World allows me to store sites recommended by people and sites I trust. I no longer have to cull through thousands of opinions from Yelp, TripAdvisor or Expedia, or assume that what is most popular on these sites would be best for me. I now have one centralized place to keep all this valuable information, plus I am able to personalize each Mark with my own notes, experiences and pictures.
As Barry and other users also note, Mark My World allows them the opportunity to personalize the information they receive by way of a self-selected network of users with whom they share information about the world. Mark My World users can also use their Marks to create itineraries for the purpose of planning travel-related trips. In addition, users can take advantage of the application’s functionality for transcribing notes and uploading pictures to create travel journals.
By facilitating the delivery of personalized travel-related content, the application represents a disruptive solution to the problem of obtaining reliable information about travel locations by empowering travelers to receive recommendations about restaurants, hotels, museums and itineraries from trusted sources. Integrated with Google Maps, Mark My World allows users to identify travel-related destinations using the Google Maps application and to correspondingly share “Marks” with other users. Users can also post their Marks on Facebook via the app and integrate “Marks” from Facebook friends directly into their portfolio of “Marks” within the Mark My World application. Available on the App Store, Mark My World is currently compatible with Apple iOS and plans are underway to expand the app to all mobile platforms. The application’s recently released Web Share functionality strengthens the attractiveness of the app for businesses such as tour companies, travel agents and bloggers interested in sharing groups of Marks on their website to a broader audience. Since its launch in June 2016, the app has experienced significant growth amongst individual users. The release of Web Share promises to expand the app’s market penetration to travel companies, food and travel bloggers and travel journalists. Expect Mark My World to continue rolling out B2B functionality and subsequently expand its adoption amongst SMBs and enterprises over the next year significantly.
��1�@