Uptake has been acquired by Groupon! We had been watching Groupon for some time, and admire how they created a powerful new business model, assembled a world-class team, helped consumers discover deals with increasingly tailored recommendations, and saw global, record-shattering growth along the way. Today, we’re delighted to announce that Uptake is now a part of Groupon.

Before we move on to this promising new opportunity with Groupon, we’d like to look back at what we’ve built and accomplished together – our tenacious and creative team, partners, blogger community, investors, advisers, and the 75+ million travelers that trusted our sites and recommendations so that they could enjoy amazing travel experiences.

Lasting more than four years, it’s been a phenomenal journey working hard to execute on our mission: to make it fun and easy for consumers to create and enjoy their ideal vacation. Our mission was rooted in the belief that consumers didn’t want to search for hours on end, but rather preferred a more thoughtful, interactive and personal way to discover and plan their travel – for example, to find the right hotel for the romantic escape or the best activities during their kid-friendly getaway.

Uptake was early to harness the Wisdom of the Crowd for online travel research and recommendations. Since the summer of 2008, Uptake has connected travelers with recommendations, driven by their preferences and intent, and drawn from the largest online travel library. En route, we developed patent-pending technology to aggregate, analyze and recommend reviews, articles and blogs from over 30,000 sites for activities, hotels and restaurants. And because travelers could discover recommendations based on their travel companies and preferences at Uptake.com, we became the third largest U.S. travel research site, behind only TripAdvisor and Yahoo! Travel.

In 2011, we discovered our technology also allowed us to uncover and organize the most valued source of recommendations – the Knowledge of your Friends. While reading reviews is helpful, whose opinions do you trust more than friends and family who have been there previously? While Facebook’s open graph initiative will structure your friends’ future travel history, Uptake was able to determine the past 8+ years of your friends’ travel histories to identify over a thousand destinations your friends have already been – without any additional work required!

All in all, we were able to combine the Wisdom of the Crowds and the Knowledge of your Friends – something no one else in the travel space has been able to cultivate to date.

Behind all of these amazing accomplishments was a stellar team of Crud-loving, problem-solving technology geeks who love travel, and travel junkies who love technology. Our new adventure at Groupon is possible thanks to the drive, energy and talent of the entire Uptake team.

We’re excited to jump in at Groupon right away – with our attention focused there, you may notice that some of Uptake’s features will slowly wind down. We hope you’ll use Groupon to continue to explore your city and fantastic places around the world.

We can’t thank you enough for all your support over the last four years! It’s been one heck-of-a ride.

All the best,
Gene & Yen

Tuesday, February 28th in the Year of the Dragon

Co-Founders Gene Mckenna and Yen Lee

What began as some bad YouTube publicity for American Airlines is growing into an employee-led drive for change in brand positioning and corporate leadership at the legacy carrier.

It started when Gailen David, under the username SkySteward, began posting videos to YouTube starring himself, dressed in frumpy corporate drag, as “The Aluminum Lady,” an AA executive with a panache for cost-cutting and a disdain for flight attendants. In one video, “The Aluminum Lady” plays with Fisher-Price dolls dressed in blue uniforms, saying, “We can run each one of these aircraft with about three less flight attendants. It looks like it’s perfectly doable.”

An American spokesperson made a public statement against the videos and reportedly called David in for a disciplinary meeting that he did not attend.

“We all have tried to deliver such great customer service,” David said in an interview with NBC Dallas-Ft. Worth. “And in return, it feels like we keep getting kicked in the gut, so this was a time for me to do something to make us all laugh for a change and really say what needed to be said.” He added: “They may fire me for it, and that’s going to be OK.”

To say something like that in today’s economy, you have to just not care whether you have a job, or have a plan and a passion for what you are doing.

It turns out that for David, it is the latter. This week, he launched a “sAAve American Airlines” petition through Change.org, appealing to U.S. Bankruptcy Court for “…a new flight plan with a new leadership team made up of individuals with a proven track record of winning rather than years of compounded failures.”

David is no rookie in the social media world. He runs a website, DearSkySteward.com, about the airline industry with a special focus on in-flight etiquette, and currently has 22,825 followers on Twitter. The petition currently has close to 3,300 signatures, far from its target of 250,000.

We will leave it for someone else to judge how much and what kind of change is needed at American, which is in Chapter 11. But this developing story is an example of how social media can work for or against a company. Media-savvy David, often interviewed in the national press, could just as easily use his platform to make his employer look good—in fact, it seems like he still might, if he sees some of the changes he hopes for at the airline.

Video: YouTube

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American Airlines Bankruptcy—What it Means for Travelers
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If your road trip takes you past Zillah, Wash., check out the 90-year-old Teapot Dome Service Station—erected as a reminder of the Teapot Dome Scandal that marred Warren G. Harding's presidency.

If you’re taking a road trip this holiday weekend and want to work in detours to a few presidential landmarks in honor of Presidents’ Day… There’s an app for that.

The Roadside Presidents app is now available in the iTunes store for $2.99 from RoadsideAmerica.com, a website with videos, news, maps and free tools to help travelers plan their own road trips. It allows travelers to find historical sites, from traditional ones like graves and birthplaces, to the more offbeat.

“We’ve discovered so many bizarre presidential sights out there,” says Ken Smith, senior editor of RoadsideAmerica.com. “By visiting conventional landmarks, but also the hidden treasures, you get the broader, nuttier picture of America’s history. You’ll never think of George Washington quite the same way after you’ve seen his whiskey-making still—or of Ronald Reagan after seeing a statue of him eating a potato pancake.”

Travelers can search for sites along their route, or search by president. In addition to driving directions, the app gives opening hours, phone numbers, photos and irreverent write-ups for each site. First ladies, vice presidents, first pets, assassination and scandal are all in the app.

The Roadside Presidents edition is the second app from Roadside America, following the original Roadside America app, introduced in 2010.

Photo: Public domain, National Park Service

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