Por Javier el 20 February 2008
As we stated earlier, of the applications presented in the Madrid Facebook Developer Garage, the one I thought was most interesting was Meet Your Friends developed for eDreams by Demini.
To make a comparison, we could say that Meet Your Friends is a Dopplr within Facebook and with more of a focus towards leisure travel than business travel.
I found it very interesting that upon entering Facebook, eDreams has not limited itself to creating a version of its portal or develop a search application for cheap flights which would be the most basic thing to do, but rather they have stretched to create a well-rounded tool that could be very interesting for travellers and tourists who have Facebook as their preferred social network.
Although the developers of Meet Your Friends are still carrying out some improvements in the application, I think it’s worth giving it a try and check out its integration with Google Maps within Facebook, the community options that it presents, …
Surely we will soon be able to see how well received it is in the Facebook community and whether it goes on to have the kind of success enjoyed by other applications like TripAdvisor.
Por Javier el 31 December 2007
Online travel agency eDreams just presented the documentation to CNMV to get listed on the stock exchange in the first quarter of 2008 with a valuation of 400 million euros.
After the acquisition of eDreams by a venture capital fund for 153 million euros, there were rumors of the company going public and it seems that now the news is being confirmed. Experience in the hispanic internet shows that wanting to go public doesn’t mean that it will happen, but in this case we hope that it will be so because it could be an important push to the sector.
In 2006, the revenues of eDreams touched 300 million euros and the year before, the profits were 4.7 million euros, which demonstrates the important volume of business related to everything that has to do with the travel sector on the internet.
Besides, eDreams is one of the online travel agencies that is vouching the most for the Web 2.0, which we can see in its community and in the day to day management through Twitter. It’s clear that there’s little connection between the Web 2.0 and going public, but it’s a sign of the company’s evolution and the interest it shows in communicating with its users.
Via Nacho Giral.
More information in Bolsacinco.
Update: Marek Fodor also talks about this and notes that the stock listing will be made in two phases. The first phase will be to generate an exit for the stock of the founders and the venture capital fund, and the second phase will serve to raise capital that could be used for acquisitions or promotional campaigns.
Read the original article in Spanish.
