American Airlines and Burrell Launch BlackAtlas.com

American Airlines developed BlackAtlas.com in partnership with Burrell Communications and Juxt Interactive and is a “social networking” site that will allow travelers to share travel experiences that may be unique to African-Americans with each other and the community there.  The site’s content will be user generated for the most part however Nelson George will serve as the sites travel expert vlogging and blogging his travel experiences on the site.  Blogalicious had many gems (both hidden and in-your-face) and the video below was one of them.  Venita Griffin the site’s Digital Content Manager does a semi-preview of the site but mainly explains what the site will be and how they will use bloggers to help contribute to the site.

Interesting sell. I got a chance to chat with Venita since initially it appears that BlackAtlas.com is a stand alone social network with yet to connect with other social networking services like Facebook or Twitter.  She assured me the site would connect with those popular services and others in Phase 2.  I reached out to her at a later date to try an get an idea when Phase 2 is slated for but have yet to receive a response.  We’ll update the story as soon as we hear soemthing.  Especially since the offering is indeed interesting but much of it’s success will rely on the integration of those other services regardless of how many bloggers they get to contribute to the sites content.

Since contributors and users will be able to rate/make recommendations, connect with other travelers with similar interests, answer questions based on their personal travel experiences and build travel itineraries based on user recommendations you can see how leveraging a users social graph is critical.

The overall offering as of today (it has yet to launch) seems great.  I’d use it…once they make it talk to other services so that I can share easily with the site.  Avid travelers may find it useful especially when looking for connections to Black culture while traveling.  Burrell’s co-CEO McGhee Williams Ossee elaborates:

“From a Jamaican restaurant in Milan to Santa Monica’s Ink Well Beach, there are uniquely African-American experiences enjoyed by travelers around the world. BlackAtlas.com is a forum that encourages travelers to share these stories and gives them the opportunity to better plan their next trip with a few key activities or places in mind.”

BlackAtlas.com launches tomorrow October 15th and I am SO looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the site too.  Will you use it?