Tech
Toronto Tourism gets trendy with new website
Toronto Tourism has upped its social media presence in the hopes of attracting greater interest in Toronto on the part of prospective visitors to the city. A recently launched website called Toronto Trending uses live Twitter updates and FourSquare check-ins to present an interactive view of the city at so-called street level. Laid over a Google satellite map or live video feeds of select locales, the idea is to show off Toronto as a happening place and to give tourists an idea of what the locals are up to.
"The thing we're dealing with, always, is Toronto is underrated as a destination. It feels a little beige. Average. Nice enough, I suppose," Shelley Brown, CEO of Crispin Porter + Bogusky Canada, told the Globe and Mail. Now the lead marketing agency for Tourism Toronto, CP+B is looking for ways to deal with what it perceives to be Toronto's "obscurity" problem.
Having watched too many one-dimensional promotional videos that highlight multiculturalism as Toronto's one and only asset, I tend to think an initiative like this one is a good idea. It remains to be seen, however, how much traction it'll get. Like any interactive project, it has to rely on some level of participation on the part of residents to really take off. Charting FourSquare check-ins is one thing; getting thousands of people to tag their tweets with #torontotrending might be more difficult.
In light of this, the live Twitter feed on the page also includes updates from prominent Toronto accounts regardless of whether or not that hashtag is used. That makes for a more action-filled user experience, but the information isn't exactly filtered very well, which can make it seem like a bit of an informational mess — not a good thing when your target audience is someone trying to learn about the city.
It'd also be great to see the live camera feeds expanded because they have the potential to be quite stimulating, but just don't offer enough variety right now. But, aside from these first impressions, it strikes me that major criticisms should be held back until the site has a few weeks to get off the ground.
Correction (6:20 p.m.): This article originally stated that CP+B was the "lead marketing agency for the City," when in fact it should have read the lead marketing agency for Tourism Toronto.
Check out the site and let us know what you think in the comments.
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Where do most tourists in Toronto come from? Where ever it is, I'm just not so sure that they are as twitter/foursqure savvy (obsessed) as Toronto residents are. New York State? The Atlantic states? Does this project actually target them?
at the risk of sounding like a troll, I just don't think that this project is really aimed at the tourists we're trying to bring here - it sounds more like a 'because we can' initiative.
don't get me wrong, I think it's a interesting site, but when it comes to attracting tourists - will this site bring more people to the city than a well written guidebook and a road map?
http://blog.foursquare.com/2011/01/24/2010infographic/
The "videoview" is useless! Its just the same short recorded videos of a few locations looped. With tweet bubbles coming from people (who didn't really tweet). In the winter will they still show the summer views?
http://fourwhere.com/ does the same thing and seems to be made by a TO company. But not with Twitter, I wonder why.
The "videoview" is useless! Its just the same short recorded videos of a few locations looped. With tweet bubbles coming from people (who didn't really tweet). In the winter will they still show the summer views?
http://fourwhere.com/ does the same thing and seems to be made by a TO company. But not with Twitter, I wonder why.
Bear in mind that multiculturalism is about as 'Canadian' as Pierre Trudeau's other misguided fuddle-duddles--it was introduced by that PM and codefied by his successor, Brian Mulroney, as a cynical means of diluting Quebecois nationalism and as a sop to ethnic bloc-voters. With Britain, Germany and other countries finally admitting that this disco-era policy was a mistake, Toronto should emphasise its true strengths: a mild (compared to, say, Calgary) climate, good shopping, proximity to Algonquin Park and other true assets.
Like pop mentioned above, why do I give a sh*t if there are 8 people at the Rogers Centre? That does not tell me anything. (I also found it interesting that the site cannot decide whether it is the Rogers Centre or the SkyDome.)
What happens when I go there and find out there are eight people there because of a private birthday function and I end up feeling like a dick for showing up?
Perhaps if they incorporated a feature that enables one to click on the location to find out what is going on there I would see more value to a site like that. As of now however, one is forced to conduct an internet search to find out what is going on and that can be time consuming.
Also, as stated in the blog posting, the information in the Twitter feed is not filtered well at all. There are things that have absolutely no business being there popping up. Case in point, I just saw something about $10 Christmas cards.
Toronto is such a fun, sexy city and this does not come across at all. Rather the city feels empty when I see that there are 8 people at the Rogers Centre so it doesn't make me want to come.