Hi guys,

We’re excited to announce that WAYN has revealed the top seven dream destinations in the world as chosen by our 21 million users worldwide. The destinations will fight it out for pole position in a user vote this month.

The seven global hot spots are Indonesia, Fiji, South Africa, Dubai, India, Brazil and Turkey.  The nominated destinations (both cities and countries) were selected by employing a combination of market research data and tracking user engagement on WAYN.com.

“Most recently, India saw an increase number of interest, both for business and leisure travels in destinations such as Delhi, Punjab, Uttrakhand and Kashmir” said Jerome Touze, co-founder of WAYN.com.

He added: ‘’Brazil was also voted favorite destinations in Latin America, with 40% of respondents from a panel of 38,000 users saying it would be their first choice in South America. It will be interesting to see which destination ends up number one but being nominated in the top seven is already a great recognition of the work these destinations are doing’’

Dubai is in a very strong position with over 10 million tourists having travelled there in 2012, its highest ever annual visitor figure. The Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) revealed a 9.3% increase in the number of visitors to the Emirate in 2012.

Our 21 million users will have the chance to vote for their favourite destination in the next two weeks, out of the seven listed, with prizes up for grabs for those who vote. Additionally, each nominee will receive US$70,000 of marketing promotion globally, out of a US$500,000 marketing contribution from Where Are You Now Ltd.

Touze said ‘I’m extremely excited about this campaign. We are in a unique position whereby we have data on over 21 million users in over 193 countries who communicate regularly with one another about their trip plans – where in the world they want to go and what they want to do when they get there… Going forward, we intend to roll out more leading award recognitions for the travel and tourism industry, so watch this space! ’

An exclusive microsite has been developed for the campaign, which goes live today. The nominated destinations will receive exposure on WAYN, media coverage and further market research insight for their destinations.

WAYN has recently undergone a complete transformation of its platform, generating over 70,000 tips, reviews, trips and activities daily. The site partners with over 50 global tourist boards, airlines, hotels and travel operators as partners and has become one of the world’s leading platforms for driving user engagement and influencing travel decisions.

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• FLIRTY TEXTS DEEMED WORSE THAN SHARING EMOTIONS
• FRENCH AND ITALIANS MORE LIKELY TO CHEAT THAN BRITS

 18 February 2013: WAYN, the world’s largest travel and lifestyle social network that re-launched last week, has some good news for lovebirds recovering from Valentine’s Day: the majority of 15,310 of the website’s members polled this month claim they would never cheat on their partner. The survey questioned WAYN users in 176 countries and the results suggest that French and Italian men are more likely to cheat than their British neighbours, and most people regard sending flirty texts as worse than sharing emotional closeness.

Almost half of Italian men claimed to have cheated on their partner – with more admitting to multiple cheats than a one-off. In France, over 30% of men responded to say they had cheated on their partner at least once. Closer to home, women can take heart, perhaps, that 73% of men in the UK said they had never cheated.

But beware those of you who have strayed as the survey shows that 32% of people would never forgive their partner if they cheated, while 56% would forgive but never forget.

Peter Ward, Co-founder of WAYN, said: “Our survey proves that it if you stray from your partner whether through sex texting, kissing or confiding emotionally, you’re unlikely to be forgiven, so it’s best to avoid straying if you value your relationship!”

The majority of respondents claim to be faithful and believe their partner to be, too. However, once cheated upon – four times as many men admit to it than women – many seek revenge, and whilst some have taken the extreme step of cutting up their partner’s clothes, most of the broken hearted find that breaking up to move on is the best step.

The survey revealed that partners should perhaps be most wary when their lover travels abroad for business or on holiday, as more than half of respondents admit they’d consider cheating when in a different country. And bad news for ladies: 48% of men claim they would cheat while on a stag do…their own or a friend’s!

Ward said: “Our light-hearted survey suggests that people around the world have different attitudes to fidelity in relationships, with the Latin lovers of Europe living up to their lothario reputations and flirty texts being seen as more of a betrayal than sharing emotional closeness. Here at WAYN travellers love sharing views – whether about relationships, cultural nuances, business etiquette or specific events and locations – and as a result benefit from gaining a global perspective.”

Ends

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Hi everyone, hope you are well!

As I attended the Microsoft  BizSpark conference last week, I got the opportunity of delivering a speech alongside James Caan from Dragons Den as well as Richard Moross from Moo cards as well as an interview with the guys at Intruders TV 

In this interview, I shared the insights and challenges facing our company and some insights on how we took our sales team in-house after long term outsourcing to agencies and why taking feedback from ‘your elders and your betters’ is worthwhile and how to tailor ad engagements to generate strong participation from your community and value for your advertisers.

You can see the interview here:

Speak soon!

Jerome

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We were very pleased to hear that WAYN got reviewed as best design site on Web User Magazine, one of the largest Web magazine in the UK – with a 5 stars out of 5!! as mentioned in article:

“Popular Travel community WAYN (Where Are You Now) has undergone a radical transformation. Its cluttered old design has been ditched in favour of a more spacious and streamlined layout, which makes the browsing much less overwhelming. Most notably, there’s an increased emphasis on Lifestyle and social-networking elements in the vein of Facebook and Twitter…WAYN remains free to use and, with 15 million members worldwide, is now an even better place to connect with like-minded people”

Here is a screenshot of the review:

On top of that, we got even more pleased when realising that CNET chose WAYN as the top vacation online sharing site!! As written by Don Reisinger, a Technology columnist:

“WAYN WAYN (Where Are You Now?) is a well-designed, highly detailed site that combines social networking with travel in a package that’s second to none. When you want to share your vacation experience, you can upload pictures, input what you’re doing at any moment with a Twitter-like service, and blog about your travels. You can also post videos of where you’ve been. But it’s the site’s design that makes it outstanding. It’s clean and intuitive. I was quite impressed”

Here is a link to the article: “ http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10241726-2.html“ 

These are great news for us as we spent the last few months working on this new design based on user’s feedback – and whilst we appreciate that we will never be able to satisfy everybody, we are glad to start off from a brand new base which step by step, should lead to greater usage and easier navigation throughout the site.  We are now in the process of refining the site even further as we do appreciate that some things need to be done better, just like our photos section which we know has many flaws! More work for us clearly

Speak soon
Jerome

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We were delighted this morning to notice the good ranking of WAYN as part of the Telegraph 100 Growth Companies Index 

As described on the page, “The Telegraph High Growth index is a selection of privately owned UK-based companies that have high growth potential. Many will have some form of venture capital backing. We have not imposed an age cut off. Rather the index picks up companies that are at different points of the trajectory from unknown venture to stardom. Each company moves up or down the index based on its impact on the Internet and importance.”

Congrats to our friends at Huddle and Mydeco for making it to the rankings too  

Here are part of the rankings:

Its 5.30 pm – we are going full steam on the sales here at WAYN with a strong plan of attack for the month of April and some very interesting prospects coming up. Despite the advertising online taking a hit overall in the industry, we are glad to be making some very good progress in bespoke advertising solutions with Tourism Boards – we have had a lot of success on that front and hopefully will capitalise on previous case studies to win more accounts in the coming months. We have actually just hired a new Sales Executive – Laura Joseph, who just joined the team yesterday and seems very eager to get cracking – thats the spirit

Our new release is now only about 1 month away and we simply cannot wait to reveal our new strategy and new site layout overall – we are opening up  a private beta testing to a selected number of users – to gather more feedback and to ensure that we do take into account our key user’s voices.  We will be posting on here soon but time for me to get 30 minutes in the gym before heading back to work – long days

Jerome

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