Mobissimo launches social travel service MobiFriends

Travel fare and deal finder site Mobissimo has added a social feature, called MobiFriends, that lets you tell your pals where you're going and when, what you're paying for your trips, and your favorite restaurants at your destinations. It optionally updates your Twitter feed, too, so now anyone tracking you can know the optimal time to burgle your house.

The MobiFriends widget will blast your travel details out to your social network, if you want it to.

There seems to be a minor bubble growing right now of travel update sites. Like Dopplr, Tripit, and BrightKite, MobiFriends does a good job of reaching out to your network and telling them what you're up to, so your pals can presumably join you at your destination and make the virtual social network real. MobiFriends' unique value is its integration into Mobissimo, a strong fare finder. If you use MobiFriends on top of Mobissimo, you can easily push your travel discoveries (good fares, for example) out to your friends. Or see the deals and locations your friends are interested in.

I'm not one to blast my travel or location info out to the world at large, but the younger demographic may not be so sensitive to privacy as I am. And Mobissimo's move to add a social element to its fare-finder service is a good way to differentiate the product from a sea of travel sites.

I will be discussing travel sites like this one in the weekly Real Deal podcast I'm recording this afternoon with Tom Merritt. Tune in to the live video and chat at 3 p.m. PDT or check on the podcast page shortly after 4 p.m. for the recorded audio-only version.