www.wayn.com

www.WAYN.com is a social network for travelers and people, who love travel, want to share experiences, photos, keep track of all your contacts from around the world and make new friends based on where they have been, where they are going and where they are now. It was initially launched as a paid service (register for free, pay for interaction). WAYN has top 2000 in Alexa Internet traffic ranking and was launched in May 2003 after two of its founders came up with the idea to connect people based on their location whilst having a few beers in their local pub.

It was founded in 2002 in London and was presented to the public in May 2003 having secured financial backing from Stephen Pankhurst, the founder of the well known UK school reunion site Friends Reunited, which recently sold to ITV for £120M (plus £55M earn-out), WAYN initially grew through word-of-mouth and reached almost 50,000 members by the end of 2004. It is also one of the very few sites which didn't lose the impact of new subscriptions after introducing fees for taking advantage of the full membership service September 2004, making it one of the few premium social networking communities that have managed to become profitable.

They now boast of having over 10 million members, growing by up to 20,000 members daily and were voted most popular community in the 2007 Website of the Year awards. WAYN is very popular in the UK where it has over 2 million members.

WAYN is actually one of the only sites who really stand out and warn all its users. WAYN additionally censors messages sent between users to encourage communication through the site.

Actually, WAYNE kind of reminds me of 43Places since I got a WAYN invite (several) but the first got me off guard, as I had just emailed that person a day or so previous and I took WAYN for a spin today, and it's certainly an interesting effort. Strangely, information about the different tiers of membership and associated costs are not advertised on WAYN's home page or at any point in the registration process.

It seemed to me like WAYN is the new Myspace for travel. WAYN stands for "where are you now. I didn't realize WAYN is big in Europe. It's a UK-based site that claims to be the world's largest travel and lifestyle social network, announced today that they've raised $11 million in Series A funding from a group of investors led by Esprit Capital Partners.

www.WAYN.com allows users to create profiles, search for other travelers near them and make real-world friends, as well as informing family where they are and has also had criticism because of the way it encourages people to add contacts from Hotmail, Gmail etc. www.WAYN.com not only allows you to meet other members based on your next intended destination, but it is also the best way to search across over 200 million names and read about other traveler's experiences in more than 400 cities worldwide.

I think that Wayn is an interesting concept, a good way to keep in touch with friends anywhere in the world. Generally it is very good site for people interested in travel, lifestyle and world affairs. I read last night about how WAYN (Where Are You Now) may be (may be) close to being sold to AOL for $USD 200 million (although WAYN denies it).

Of course, the site is here to stay, let's see what it has in store in future.