signor_john - 8:21 pm on Sep 25, 2009 (gmt 0)

Why do I feel this is gonna kill off travel sites.

It might hurt the CitySearch-style sites. It certainly won't "kill off travel sites," though, any more than TripAdvisor and VirtualTourist have killed off Fodor's or Lonely Planet.

IMHO, the "Place pages" concept is interesting, but the sheer volume of unedited information is beginning to make structured, human-edited sites seem like peaceful refuges from user-generated data dumps. As a user, I don't mind digging through the unedited piles of verbiage and photos now and then (especially if the topic is obscure enough that I'm grateful to find anything at all on it in a Google search), but when I'm actively planning a trip, I'll go to a well-organized site that makes it easy to find and digest useful information--just as I'll go to one of the professional camera-review sites when I'm trying to decide between a Nikon, a Canon, a Sony, a Pentax, or an Olympus DSLR.