A Social Networking Analysis Of Travel Blogs

Travel blogs are C2C online diaries publishing personal stories and experiences, providing thoughts, commentaries, suggestions, advice and details of trips. In tourism, one of the most important information sources for travel planning is word of mouth. Travel blogs, a practiced form of word of mouth, play a crucial role in traveler’s purchase decision. The paper aims to provide a methodology to locate central groups of travelers and to locate travelers that link to them. The paper also finds connectivity patterns between these groups of travelers: patterns of central travelers and patterns of travelers linking to them. It uses TravelPod (www.travelpod.com), the most popular travel blog, and studies incoming links between travelers through “favorite travelers” list, which is equivalent to a blogroll. The paper records 563 travelers. By using Social Networking theory, Multidimensional Scaling, and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis, the paper identifies central travelers’ groups. Their importance is studied with regards to number of incoming links and travelers’ and blogs’ characteristics.

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