A new service that allows travelers to see flight deals via Facebook launched April 5, bringing flight price tracking directly into the news feed of the social network.
The new app, offered by travel search engine Mobissimo, allows anyone using Facebook to create personalized fare "indexes" which track the fares on routes they are interested in (for instance, Paris Charles de Gaulle to New York JFK).
Once the app has been installed by a user and the alerts are set up, fare alerts appear in that user's news feed, with little arrows signifying price rises or falls on a daily or weekly basis -- making it easier to book when the flight is cheaper.
By clicking on the app to go to the Mobissimo dashboard, users can search for other flights and see deals found by other users with the same outbound airport.
Mobissimo, which operates flight search sites in several European and Latin American countries, India and Japan, says that the flight search comes at a good time for travel booking.
"Mobissimo’s fare alerts come just in time to find good deals on summer travel in a year when the improving economy has increased demand for cheap travel, and when fewer routes and high fuel prices make bargains hard to find,” said a spokesman.
The fare alerts are a similar feature to those offered using email from curated site Airfarewatchdog.com, but the integration with Facebook is somewhat unique and suggests that we could soon be using the world's largest social networking site for other purposes.
With airfare deals integrated into the news feed, it may not be too long before hotels begin offering live rate updates to users -- several already post their deals manually for fans of their Facebook pages.
In the last year, several airlines such as Malaysian Airlines and US carrier Delta have launched booking and even check-in pages to Facebook, making it easy for travelers to book flights without leaving the site or to see which of their friends will be on the same aircraft.
Try the app: http://apps.facebook.com/mobissimo
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