In Your Pocket guides – synonymous with trustworthy local expertise – really came to the forefront of online and locally-distributed travel content via their coverage of emerging and expanding Eastern European destinations. I’ve caught up with Editor-in-chief, Craig Turp, for the latest news on their re-vamped website. Still at beta stage, the improved site aims to give visitors a much clearer path to In Your Pocket guides, and more importantly, in a variety of formats: there’ll be featured online or as PDF or Ipaper, as well as in traditional print.
From the travel writers’ perspective, the site’s new functionality creates a much more interactive site, encouraging quality comments from readers. It will offer another chance to share tips from your latest trips, whilst those finding their voice can use it as a high-profile practice ground for airing their writing and reviews.
Craig said of the site,
‘We have incorporated reader comments, and will display the latest for a particular city, country or chapter on each relevant page. Also, we will supply easy ‘share’ clicks, and allow users to submit photos’.
‘This means we will finally be able to put things out there for discussion. Until now, we have not been able to do this as our features have all been one-way. We’ll let people respond via text, via video, via photo’.
And it’s not just the obvious subjects (hotels, restaurants and bars) that will be up for grabs. In Your Pocket seems to be after a much freer-feel, perhaps hoping to publish comments on a diverse range of travel-related subjects: everything, for example, from Parisian metro poetry to Scandinavian schnapps-drinking salutations.
Follow the In Your Pocket Twitter. They’ll soon be posting the address of the private beta there.