Instagram will always be my first love when it comes to travel inspiration on social media, but there’s another app on the way that’s caught my eye, too 🙂
Last month I was introduced to an up and coming social media platform called Showzee (a combination of the word “show” and “see”) that is perfect for finding travel inspiration and beyond. In some ways, the layout on Showzee somewhat resembles Pinterest, but the way it works is different.
In a quick chat with co-founder Ryan Gruss, I learned that Showzee is a family-founded app (how awesome!) that was started with his father Marlon and brother Justin. Originally, it was meant to connect people around their recipe preferences, “but we decided that our vision was much broader and we wanted to connect like-minded people through their experiences and across different interests,” according to Ryan.
Showzee is an interactive platform with a vision of offering a new kind of social world that brings people together by what they do away from their web and mobile screens.
It’s designed on a model of interaction called the “interest graph” that allows people to connect based on shared interests.
Right when you sign up for Showzee, you get to filter what shows up in your homescreen by selecting relevant interests. Travel, outdoor & adventure, photography, and food & drink are a couple of the categories I signed up for. But if you’re into entertainment, fashion, nightlife, architecture, people, sports, music, education, and whatever else it may be, Showzee’s got you covered.
Ami Bhat from Thrilling Travel put it nicely in a recent post when she said, “It is not a jumbled up newsfeed where food stories get mixed with travel or photography or fashion or something that does not really interest you,” the way it happens on Facebook and Twitter.
Although it’s well known that you can live vicariously through others on Facebook and Instagram, you can also do the same on Showzee, but in a more vibrant way. By creating Showzees (which, to me, are kind of like mini photo essays and remind me of Pinterest boards), you can bring your experiences and interests to life by conveying them through photos and videos, and providing brief descriptions.
It’s the way experiences are shared on Showzee that make it a goldmine for travel inspiration. (And, of course, for inspiration in whatever areas you choose to follow.) That’s a huge plus because it parallels with what I’d like readers of Backyard Destinations to take away from this blog – inspiration to explore and travel. Being able to effortlessly scroll through a series of photos of other people’s adventures and read brief descriptions about each one kind of makes you feel like you’re there walking around the city or sitting at the dining table eating cultural cuisines.
You can also interact with other users by reposting Showzees, sparking them (aka “liking” them), and commenting on them. You can also spark comments people leave on your Showzees.
For bloggers, the new social media platform offers an immensely useful function in the description field that is not found on Instagram: links are clickable! (Hooray for driving additional traffic to our sites!)
Although it’s not available on mobile devices just yet (but it will be soon, so keep an eye out!), you can take Showzee for a spin by signing up on your computer or on your mobile device browser.
(Also, if you’re looking for other sources of social media travel inspiration, check out this post on Laugh Eat Travel.)