I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
– Oscar Wilde
A Beijing-based startup is about to roll-out its travel journal-style service and an accompanying iPhone app – called AoYouJi – which’ll be a first on the Chinese web.
I don’t think I’ve ever covered a startup before it has even properly made its debut, but I’m making an exception for AoYouJi because it looks sweet. Plus, despite there being a few American apps like this (such as TripColor), AoYouJi has its own distinct style and a refreshing, green and white interface.
AoYouJi is essentially a multimedia, LBS-packed, travel diary app, allowing you to make good-looking journals from your trips with plenty of videos and photos – and less of an emphasis on text – that are geo-tagged. Plus, users will be able to make a neat chronology of their trip, so that the holiday becomes chaptered more clearly across a day or location. These colourful journeys can be recounted and shared from within the app, replete with the usual social media features such as comments, and will also be viewable on a ‘trips’ page on the desktop website, as shown here:
The upcoming AoYouJi app for iPhone which you can use on your travels...
...And then show everyone your completed journey on either the app or the desktop website.
It all sounds neat, and we’ll give it a proper hands-on review once it launches. It sounds promising because, after taking a holiday, showing your online buddies a commentary-less photo gallery can be bemusing; whilst writing a big blog post about it can be a huge effort. So this approach seems like a fitting blend of the two, without requiring too much hassle.
We’ve looked at some other fun Chinese travel-oriented startups recently – one for finding travel buddies; another for sharing travel tips – but neither of those are similar to this.
Here’s the startup’s website, which will eventually be home to the iPhone app, and where you can apply for an invite.
[Source: Tech2IPO and the AoYouJi blog - articles in Chinese]