TripAdvisor: We Are Not Making This Up.

Help TA give away $1 million

Taking a break from snarkiness for a minute... if you've visited TA lately, you've probably seen lots of promotions for "More than Footprints," our new initiative in which we're donating $1 million to five travel-related charities. We're asking everyone to vote (at www.tripadvisor.com/Causes) on how the money is divided amongst these nonprofits:

• Conservation International - Eco-tourism
• Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) - Emergency relief
  
• National Geographic Society - Exploring and sustaining authentic places
  
• The Nature Conservancy - Environmental protection
• Save the Children - Aiding children around the world

When voting closes on November 9, we'll divide the $1 million according to the percentage of votes each cause receives. Each nonprofit will receive at least $50K just for participating.

Also-- if you tell your friends about More than Footprints, we'll add more votes to the cause you supported.

Why's it called More than Footprints? We won't go on at length here, but basically, we're trying to take the "Take no more than pictures, leave no more than footprints" mantra to a new level. We think you can leave more than your footprints behind if you support organizations that are working toward positive change in the destinations you visit.

Why online voting? It's kind of natural for us. Our entire business is based on the power of the collective voice, so we're trusting our travelers to guide our corporate giving... literally putting our money where our mouth is.

Why now? We've been really successful. It's time to give back. Plus, with the economic downturn, individual donations are more difficult for a lot of people right now, and charities are in need. This is a way to support great causes without spending a dime of your own money.

So-- thanks for taking the time to read this, and please vote. If you have comments on the campaign (or ideas on how we can reach more people), e-mail us.

TripAdvisor's on Facebook (and there's a cool new map in your TA profile)

Now TripAdvisor's on Facebook too! We've posted a world map that lets you show everyone where you've been... and the same map is on your TA profile too. You can add destinations in either place. It's rather addictive to use (and it's lots of fun to see where your friends have been). Mad props to our developers for getting this out so fast!

Check it out here: http://apps.facebook.com/tripadvisortravelmap and in your profile on TripAdvisor.

As promised before, the snarkiness returns Monday.

Do you use Facebook? Add TravelPod to your profile.

TravelPod.com, a very cool travel blogging site (and, coincidentally, one of TripAdvisor's sister companies), just launched a new feature that allows Facebook users to add TravelPod to their Facebook profile.

If you have both a TravelPod and a Facebook account, you can add a TravelPod "patch" to your Facebook profile. It allows your friends to see a map of where you've been and links to your TravelPod blog and photos. More info is available here.

Facebook just released a development platform on May 24 that allows other companies to get their content onto Facebook, and the TravelPod folks have been working pretty much round the clock since then to make this happen.

Apologies that this is not in the Owl's typical snarky tone, but we just think it's pretty darn cool that the TravelPod team was able to do this in about one week, so we wanted to share it with the readers of our blog. (Plus, maybe TP will buy the Owl a beer or some field mice when they see this.)

Check it out-- it's very cool.

http://www.travelpod.com
http://www.facebook.com

We'll be back next week in regular snarky form. Have a great weekend, everybody!