Vienna-based travel social network, TripWolf launches its public beta site today. They’re the latest travel guide site and to prove that, despite what some people say, the online travel area is not saturated.

TripWolf has received over $1.2 million in funding and its main value proposition is to allow its members to create a personalized travel guide with data it gets from different online sources as well as from their community.

TechCrunch wrote an article about it and one of the comments bugged me, because I’ve seen people saying this about YowTRIP too.

“How is this different than Tripit or Dopplr, for instance?” - one asked. As if all travel sites are the same and/or a copycat of Tripit or Dopplr, which were not the first nor will be the last online travel site… They just happen to be backed up by people who contribute to the blogs which the people asking these questions usually read, but we won’t go down that road.

Well, Tripit is a travel organizer that creates one’s travel itinerary by forwarding your confirmation emails to them. And Dopplr is an online service that lets frequent travelers share future travel plans with friends and colleagues.

So the value proposition of all of these site are different and they target different audiences… They are all travel social networks, so you would expect similar basic functionalities and I think that’s where people get confused in thinking they’re all the same.

I look forward to seeing how TripWolf will do.