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What is "Travelers Night In"?
Every Thursday from 3:30-5:00 EST, Twitter users who love travel come together for Travelers Night In (TNI) to chat about the latest and greatest of the travel world. Each week, TNI tackles a different theme, and for those 90 minutes, the hosts of TNI discuss the theme with participants. Past themes have included Winter Destinations, Adventure Travel, and Mexico/Caribbean travel. This week's theme is City Travel, and next week's theme is Travel for Foodies.How does it work?
The process is simple: the hosts of TNI ask one question every 10 minutes for the 90 minutes of the event. Participants respond with answers, questions, tips, etc. Each Tweet should include #TNI, so it's easy for followers to track. If you forget to include #TNI in your Tweet, it's likely that comment will be lost.
The process is very democratic. It is NOT 90 minutes of hosts lecturing to participants. Quite the opposite! In reality, the hosts throw out questions and keep the conversation moving, but participants do the bulk of the knowledge sharing.
How can I participate?
How you participate is ultimately up to you, of course, but you can easily join in by loading your Twitter page (or your Tweetdeck, or your Hootsuite, or...) and searching for #TNI.
Warning: hundreds of people show up online for this event, and Twitter and many third-party Twtitter apps can't load replies quickly enough. Power users suggest using Tweetgrid -- we've created a custom Tweetgrid for you here -- which allows you to enter search keywords of interest for you. In this case, we suggest using, at a minimum, search keywords #TNI and probably your Twitter handle. You can add other phrases that interest you, if you like.
I'm not on Twitter.
It's ok! You can still use Tweetgrid (or Twitter's built-in search functions) to follow the conversation, but you won't be able to contribute to the discussion. Maybe this is a good time for you to join Twitter? It's easy (and free) to get an account, and without a Twitter account, you can't participate. Sign up, and join the conversation.
(If you join Twitter, be sure to follow Gadling!)
I can't participate. Will you please stop Tweeting so much?
Gadling is honored to have hosted TNI several times, and it's a lot of fun. It's great to interact with a community that loves travel, and it's great to learn travel tips from such a seasoned community of travelers. We learn something every week, and that's our favorite thing about TNI.
Occasionally, we get comments over Twitter about how we're tweeting too heavily during TNI. To this, we have to say:
1.) The point of Twitter is to engage, so if you're unhappy that we're engaging with readers and followers, we're sorry, but maybe you should go back to using RSS. However, we think we're using Twitter in a smart, creative way, so we ask that you forgive (or ignore) us for these 90 minutes of Twitterrhea.
2.) If you understand that Twitter is about engagement, but you still hate that we "flood" your timeline, please understand: TNI is only 90 minutes per week. The rest of the week, we try hard to be conservative, and interesting, and not flood timelines with silly or irrelevant non-travel Tweets. We don't love flooded timelines, either -- but we understand and forgive when there are good reasons for said flooding.
Where can I learn more?
I'm not on Twitter.
It's ok! You can still use Tweetgrid (or Twitter's built-in search functions) to follow the conversation, but you won't be able to contribute to the discussion. Maybe this is a good time for you to join Twitter? It's easy (and free) to get an account, and without a Twitter account, you can't participate. Sign up, and join the conversation.
(If you join Twitter, be sure to follow Gadling!)
I can't participate. Will you please stop Tweeting so much?
Gadling is honored to have hosted TNI several times, and it's a lot of fun. It's great to interact with a community that loves travel, and it's great to learn travel tips from such a seasoned community of travelers. We learn something every week, and that's our favorite thing about TNI.
Occasionally, we get comments over Twitter about how we're tweeting too heavily during TNI. To this, we have to say:
1.) The point of Twitter is to engage, so if you're unhappy that we're engaging with readers and followers, we're sorry, but maybe you should go back to using RSS. However, we think we're using Twitter in a smart, creative way, so we ask that you forgive (or ignore) us for these 90 minutes of Twitterrhea.
2.) If you understand that Twitter is about engagement, but you still hate that we "flood" your timeline, please understand: TNI is only 90 minutes per week. The rest of the week, we try hard to be conservative, and interesting, and not flood timelines with silly or irrelevant non-travel Tweets. We don't love flooded timelines, either -- but we understand and forgive when there are good reasons for said flooding.
Where can I learn more?
- If you'd like to learn more about the founders of TNI, head over to ZipSetGo and see what they have to say about TNI.
- For further reading, check out Adventurous Kate's blog, where she does a TNI recap most weeks.
- Join us this Thursday starting at 3:30EST and see what other travel-lovers have to say about City Travel. See you there!
Filed under: Internet Tools
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tomtravel2 Apr 21st 2010 9:38PM
Thanks @Gadling for a great explanation of #TNI. Now I can just send a link to all those who ask "What's #TNI?" every Thursday I join in. I also get a few Twitterrhea complaints when I join in on #TNI. Who can jump into that fast moving and fascinating gab fest without flooding the nearest stream? Not me! My goofy schedule looks like I will finally be free to throw my two cents in this week! I can't wait to tweet you there!
robbie Apr 21st 2010 11:21PM
its horrible, and i absoultely wish Gadling wouldn't do it.
I hope that Gadling realises that some of use use an RSS feed or an app on our mobile phones that with the crazy amount of tweets that come through push out the interesting ones.
Also, you call it Traveler's *NIGHT* In but yet start it at 3:30pm. I guess the Gadling crew is getting old and needs to be done in time for the early bird special and in bed by 7pm.
Willy Apr 22nd 2010 8:09AM
Thanks for your kind words, Tom.
Robbie, I'm sorry you're disappointed, and I understand that some people use Twitter as an RSS feed, but... Twitter is NOT an RSS feed. Twitter is a two-way engagement tool, and Gadling loves using it that way. Once again: TNI is ONLY 90 minutes per week (and we didn't participate last week), and we try to be very conservative during the rest of Thursday, and mostly stay out of your Twitter stream.
Regarding calling it "night"... it may not be night where you are, but it is night where some others are. Thanks for reading Gadling!
AdventurousKate Apr 23rd 2010 9:35AM
Thanks for linking to my blog! I love doing the recaps. People have so many great ideas! :-)