[agazso]

Checked out your site and as an avid backpacker found the idea pretty cool, but yes, it feels empty.

My experience is that backpackers tend to use Facebook a lot, so integrate your login with Facebook Connect for starters. Make it more social by hotels/restaurants/etc. having Like buttons that points to your site.

Create a Facebook group, where these people can get to know each other. It is also a good opportunity to advertise your page.

Try to fetch data from Google Maps/Yelp/Foursquare and put it on your site. Make badges and achievments like Foursqare does, that users can earn and show off. That makes them wanting to go back to your site and make activities.

[ihavetoblog]

Facebook Connect is in the works. I was thinking of having an internal like button to use with the internal point system each user gets for being active.

facebook group already exists and it has supporters.

I will look into those sources to populate the site with info.

Aside from it being new and empty, is there anything off the top of your head, as a backpacker, that would make you not want to use the site?

[agazso]

For me the main raison holding back is that I don't like to register to new websites. I like for example Hacker News' Clickpass authentication, because it's easy to use and I don't have to remember another password. But on your site Facebook connect would be even better, because it opens a lot of possibilites.

Another thing is that I don't know how the blog looks like because I can't find a link to it. So a Tour or Help would be nice, or a link to active blogs from the main page.

Other ideas:

Make a contest for newly registered users for a prize of something cool, e.g. iPhone4. Also make a mobile optimized version of the site, or an iPhone app, where the users can find, comment, upload images based on GPS coordinates.

[ihavetoblog]

I feel an iphone app may be too much time/money spent when I don't have the base of the site fully functioning or very usable. Resources are tight now, so I would want to focus on the usability of the main site vs iphone app.

Same things goes for the mobile version. I've had this conversation with many people and it always ends up in the chicken vs egg debate. Some people argue that having a mobile/smartphone add will increase user base, others agree to focus on the main site and have those as addons after I complete certain milestones

the header Travelers section has the blog info, but I will probably populate the homepage with them as suggested elsewhere

[mgkimsal]

As you make changes to the main site, just keep in mind how that same URL will render on mobile devices, and make changes accordingly. There are many 'full' sites I use on an iPhone because it's still easy to consume info, even though it's not a dedicated 'mobile' version.

[ihavetoblog]

will do. We originally had a flash banner and crap like that ... that was opted against for various reasons