TripIt was already a handy, automated tool for travel planning, has added another feature for helping you stay updated while you’re on the go. It’s new Closeness alert is a location-based social tool that notifies users if their travel plans overlap with their friends that are on TripIt. It’s a two-fold feature that lets you see others that are in the area at the same time you are, as well as friends that will be coming to your city. From your TripIt account, you can select dates in order to see when your future travel plans will overlap with those of your friends. You’ll need at least five friends in order to get started with this new feature, so go be friendly.

Of course we all know I like automated features that do some of the work for me, so I don’t need to recount its usefulness here, but the Closeness alert also builds on the very automated nature of the TripIt network, and layers in some social utility as well. You may recall TripIt’s last releases, which unleashed a bunch of integrated features for iCals, restaurant reservations, mobile itinerary access, and more. In using these automated tools for the social end, TripIt takes one more step out of the process of planning your trips, similar to Placely, which began as a social, automated tool for trip-planning, though it has less integrated options as TripIt.

Is this Closeness alert feature TripIt’s major entrant into another realm of social travel-planning? It’s an interesting way to venture into the social capabilities of making, accessing and sharing travel plans on the web, and can easily give way to even more social utility that can be garnered from the site. As long as privacy measures can be enforced, I think there’s plenty or room for even more automated, social features throughout TripIt.

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