In a world of unwritten rules, one would never attempt to eat sushi with a fork or show up to a job interview wearing a costume unless you happen to be applying for a position as a clown (or wanting to be clowned).

One particular travel site, however, is taking a different approach than the rest of the players in an elite group of meta search engines in the online travel space. Mobissimo has embraced social networking and personalization tools to a degree that far exceeds its competitors (Kayak, Sidestep and Farecast).

I checked out Mobissimo’s Share Space called MobiShare (available directly on a tab on Mobissimo’s home page). Powered by Plum, this area of the site allows visitors to create a space to share all their travel-related urls, images, videos, notes or documents. It’s like a scrapbook of travel ideas. With MobiShare you can create shared folders where friends can contribute and anyone on the site can comment on the content or discover new places to visit.  MobiShare adds to Mobissimo’s MobiFriends travel community where you can meet travelers from around the world and share the fares you find on Mobissimo.

Other than including a “Deals” section on their sites, true meta search engines have been known to keep a minimalist’s approach in design so that the main focus is on their bread and butter – search. However, with travelers taking fewer trips this year, consumers want to make sure they’re getting the most out of every trip so Mobissimo’s strategy to differentiate by adding a fully integrated social networking component may well pay off.

Historically, Kayak/Sidestep and Farecast (with much greater funding) have had stronger overall U.S. traffic growth than Mobissimo, whereas Mobissimo has had stronger international brand awareness. As a result, Mobissimo’s social networking initiative to grow organically within its own ecosystem may also prove to be a good sticking point for its worldwide user base, keeping visitors engaged longer and driving incremental customer acquisition.

I’m scratching my head here to find out exactly why Ryanair, Europe’s largest low fares airline, is duking it out with hotel booking giant Expedia. They’re not only in the middle of a verbal slanging match in the media, but the two of them have also landed up in court in a legal mess of claims and counterclaims.

Ryanair (Nasdaq: RYAAY) just announced that it has given 30 days notice to Expedia (Nasdaq: EXPE) that its hotel contract, which gave Expedia exclusive rights to sell hotel accommodation on Ryanair.com, will end following Expedia’s failure to honour payment terms. As things stand, the contract will be terminated on the 8th November 2008.

In a press statement, Ryanair’s Deputy CEO Michael Cawley, said that “Ryanair offered Expedia the unique opportunity to exclusively access its 58 million passengers through Europe’s largest travel website, Ryanair.com. Regrettably, Expedia has failed to honour key obligations under this agreement, in particular its payment terms, and our attempts in recent months to get Expedia to resolve these breaches, have failed so we now have no alternative but to give them notice. Should Expedia remedy its breach within the 30 day period, Ryanair will continue the partnership.”

In response, Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Expedia, Inc., says that “We are disappointed by the statement made by Ryanair earlier today, as we believe that Expedia has complied in every respect with the terms of our agreement with Ryanair, including all payment terms, and that Ryanair has failed to honor its obligations under that agreement. We have a long history of solid relationships with our partners and take our contractual obligations seriously; we expect our partners to do the same. We strongly believe that Ryanair does not have the right to terminate our agreement.”

The matters in dispute are the subject of legal proceedings that have been pending since May 2008 before the Commercial Court in London. On Friday, October 10, 2008 the Court gave directions to the parties for an orderly resolution of this dispute with a view to a trial of the claim and counterclaim in November 2009 if the matter is not settled before then.

The Ryanair press statement also says that Ryanair entered into the agreement with Travelscape LLC (the parent of Expedia) on the 21st March 2007.

Couple of points I’d like to note here. Firstly, that Bellevue, Wash. based Expedia Inc. is the parent of the Nevada based Travelscape, not the other way round. And secondly, that this problem probably has more to do with Ryanair than with Expedia. That’s because Expedia has similar agreements with many other airlines, including Air China, and the Denver based Frontier Airlines. And also with a huge number of other travel service providers other than airlines.

In fact, this Expedia contract is actually more a standard software – Expedia Private Label Worldwide Travel Exchange (WWTE) – which plugs itself into any website, offering the website’s visitors a choice to book flights, vacation packages, rental cars and Expedia’s list of hotel properties. It’s a simple enough process, like an affiliate program. Even Expedia uses WWTE to offer flight bookings from airlines like American Airlines and Virgin America on its own and its subsidiaries’ websites.

The point is that it’s not something which Expedia and Ryanair cooked up exclusively for their partnership. It’s the same arrangement (broadly speaking) that Expedia has with other airlines and travel service providers.

In the press statement announcing the termination, Ryanair’s Michael Cawley also adds that “We have already received approaches from a number of other hotel providers across Europe and expect to have a replacement partner up and running before the end of the year.”

In my opinion, the real issue here is that Ryanair wants more out of hotel sales from their website than what they’re getting now, and some European hotel provider must have offered them a bigger cut of the hotel booking pie.

Be that as it may, this ain’t over yet, and you can expect a lot more fireworks from both sides in the coming months.

We are looking for extraordinary individuals who enjoy working in collaborative, results-driven teams. If you are creative problem-solver, collaborative and eager to push the edge on where web search and travel planning will evolve, please email us your CV concerning one of our open positions:

• Application/ UI Engineer
• Data Extractor / Web Data Miner
• Natural Language Engineer
• Business Intelligence and Data Analytics Lead

Why Join UpTake?

• Travel is the largest e-commerce sector
• We are addressing a significant unmet consumer need in that sector
• We have a leadership team with prior entrepreneurial success and deep travel and search experience
• We have proven our unique technology, our complementary approach and our business model
• We are centrally located, 1/2 block from the Caltrain station in Palo Alto
• We don’t have so much free food that you’ll put on 15 pounds during your first month
• We are a results-driven, fun and collaborative team
• We are fully funded to profitability with proven top-tier investors

Our “Week at the Ritz” (or $5K) Referral Program

To thank you for introducing us to an engineering candidate we add to the UpTake team, we will send you to the Ritz. Any Ritz, anytime for a week (our President is a Canuck who is partial to the Four Seasons and can recommend a few personal favorites, so we’d be happy to send you to a Four Seasons for a week instead)! We’ll pay for your room, breakfast for a week and a daily spa treatment too, if you wish.

-or-

If you prefer, we’ll pay you a referral fee of $5,000.

-or-

Donate $7,500 in your name to the Bay Area chapter of Big Brothers Big Sisters. To be eligible, please send your referrals to jobs@uptake.com before this Thanksgiving (and be the first to send us the candidate). If candidates come to us directly as a result of your introduction, please make sure they mention your name in the subject line of their initial email.

Thanks!

UPDATE: Be sure to see our coverage of Conde Nast World Savers Congress 2009 here.

Here are a few photos from this morning’s Conde Nast World Savers Congress to give you a sense of what the event looks like.  Also on my Flickr photostream.  I’ll try to keep updating this with more pictures throughout the day.

Awards:

Klara Glowczewska introducing the conference and Matt Damon’s work:

Andrea Ross of Journeys Within

Standing next to her is Narla Phay, who is a graduate of their first class of programs and now is on the Board of Directors of their community foundation, JourneyWithinOurCommunity.org.