Airline's own social network sites - not for me

I was reminded by a recent email from BA about this topic. A couple of years ago I blogged about KLM's first foray into having their own social network sites (interest-specific).



Since then only a few other airlines have established their own sites.

• Air France and KLM's new Bluenity (differs from earlier sites in that it is for all customers)


• British Airway's MetroTwin


• Lufthansa's GenFlyLounge


• Qantas' Travel Insider

In my view they all share 2 common problems - they are too specific to an airline and being airline sponsored they do not empower consumers as much as other communities such as Flyer Talk do.



Cranky Flier (at BNET rather than his own site) and Robin Wauters of TechCrunch have both been critical of these airline social networking sites.