Thingfo and Mobissimo just launched MobiFriends, described as an online travel “collaborative community” by Mashable, and as a “travel social network” by TechCrunch.

I think MobiFriends can also be described as a “social travel application. ” How so? MobiFriends is an app that helps people do some key things, all in the context of Mobissimo’s industry-leading travel search engine:

1. Create a MobiFriends profile (using data imported from other networks, and linking off-site to their other sites)
2. Connect to fellow travelers
3. Share trip plans
4. Share favorite hotels, restaurants, cafes, museums, activities, etc.
5. Broadcast their activity from MobiFriends to Twitter (with more broadcast options coming soon)

Here are screenshots of the app, showing off some of what I describe above:

In addition to social networking features like creating a profile and connecting to other like-minded users, MobiFriends connects people based on where they live, or where they’re traveling. In addition, MobiFriends connects travelers based on shared tastes and recommendations for hotels, cafes, and activities.

MobiFriends is embedded in the Mobissimo site, and powering the app is Thingfo. So, rather than describing Thingfo as a white-label social networking provider, I prefer to describe Thingfo as a social application provider. Thingfo was designed so that we can provide contextually relevant social applications across a wide range of vertical markets.

Why social apps? To answer that question, let’s take a step back and look at the history of social networks. The first generation of mainstream social networks, personified by Friendster and MySpace, are widely described as pure “social networking” apps. However, they have some key utility for users. As Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison point out in their history of social networks piece:

Friendster was designed to help friends-of-friends meet, based on the assumption that friends-of-friends would make better romantic partners than would strangers (J. Abrams, personal communication, March 27, 2003). Friendster gained traction among three groups of early adopters who shaped the site—bloggers, attendees of the Burning Man arts festival, and gay men (boyd, 2004)—and grew to 300,000 users through word of mouth before traditional press coverage began in May 2003 (O’Shea, 2003).

MySpace was used by teens for self-expression, finding and following musicians, and of course, dating.

Bands were not the sole source of MySpace growth, but the symbiotic relationship between bands and fans helped MySpace expand beyond former Friendster users. The bands-and-fans dynamic was mutually beneficial: Bands wanted to be able to contact fans, while fans desired attention from their favorite bands and used Friend connections to signal identity and affiliation. Futhermore, MySpace differentiated itself by regularly adding features based on user demand

Naturally, with the rise of MySpace and other new “social networking” sites lots of people with existing websites realized that they could offer these features to their user base. So, white label providers of social software offer social-networking-in-a-box to snap onto an existing site. In fact, at Yahoo!, I put together a team inside the Media Group to build our own internal system that would add social networking features to Media (and any other) Yahoo! properties. The system we built went on to power lots of internal Yahoo! sites.

Now, there are times when you’re running a site and you want something more specialized than a social network and social networking features (blogging, comments, video uploads, etc.) attached to your domain. When a social network without a purpose crops up, “yet another social network” is the usual complaint, followed by “what is the value-add for the site’s users? ” If you can’t answer these questions, it’s tough to succeed. Most people are already a member of 1 or more major social networks and you have to convince them to join another one for your site.

One of the ideas behind Thingfo was that in the current market, sites need to offer some utility beyond basic connections as part of a “social” offering. In fact, for most successful sites, their utility is already built in. Mobissimo provides great travel search and deals for international travelers. Therefore, it’s natural for Thingfo to create a social travel application that helps people share their trips, deals and favorite spots in cities around the world. And since the Thingfo platform is set up to connect users to their profiles on other social networks — with data importing as well as exporting — members of MobiFriends can focus on their trips and their favorites, and link to their other profiles and sites where they’ve already invested time and energy to create a rich personal profile.

Now, going back to the larger market for social applications, there are some relevant posts on GigaOm that caught my interest. First, Carleen Hawn points to a blog post by VC Fred Wilson where Wilson talks about what he called the “market verticalization” of personal publishing.

“the personal publishing market evolved from cumbersome web sites to online diaries called blogs to social networks and more recently to microblogs.” Wilson refers to this evolution as a “verticalization.”

In a related post, Om Malik talks about further verticalization of the market.

The way I see it, the market has shifted its focus onto niche social networks, such as those dedicated to sports, music, automobiles and pets. You know, sites like Dogster! They have focused, engaged communities, which means they can attract a higher amount of advertising dollars. (Liz came up with a taxonomy of social networks back in February 2007 that offers up an easy way to understand the nuances of the social networking landscape.)

Not only do they have a purpose, but they don’t depend on hit-or-miss behavioral targeting-based ad systems that many hope will one day turn social networks into a gold mine. After all, if you sell dog food, then everyone on Dogster is a potential customer.

That’s where Thingfo comes in. We are here to help “niche” or specialized sites offer new social apps that supplement their core feature set and to extend the reach of those apps across social networks. We plan to launch other social apps for many verticals in the coming months, and we’ll keep connecting our apps to more networks and open API’s as we do it — as well as adding new features to the platform. Have some thoughts on the social web and social apps? Please share with a comment.

Update: and if you’ve made it this far, add me as a friend on MobiFriends!