UpTake Media Highlights

Los Angeles Times

January 4, 2009, Before your trip, be quick on the uptake

"Not everybody has well-traveled friends who can give them the scoop on what to do or where to stay on their next holiday. Uptake.com gathers branded online travel reviews and packages them in one handy website. The result is a travel-specific, word-of-mouth playground that will save you time searching the net for trusted opinions."--Jen Leo, Travel Web Buzz

New York Times

December 2, 2008, Top Ten Semantic Web Products of 2008

"Semantic search start-up UpTake (formerly Kango) aims to make the process of booking travel online easier. In our review in May, we explained that UpTake is a vertical search engine that has assembled what it says is the largest database of US hotels and activities - over 400,000 of them - from more than 1,000 different travel sites. Using a top-down approach, UpTake looks at its database of over 20 million reviews, opinions, and descriptions of hotels and activities in the US and semantically extracts information about those destinations."--Richard McManus, R/W/W

San Jose Mercury News

July 13, 2008, Drilling Deeper: Niche ‘vertical sites’ Refine Web Searching

"UpTake's aim is to become the first site people visit when puzzling over vacation plans. It compiles and organizes data about destinations, as well as ratings based on user reviews from TripAdvisor, RealTravel and hundreds of other sites. It makes money through advertising and by providing leads to book travel and lodging at other travel Web sites."

Sramana Mitra

July 8, 2008, Deal Radar 2008: UpTake

"What sets this company apart from competitors like Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity and TripAdvisor is that they have indexed 20 million reviews across hundreds of sites to come up with the best solution for a travel query. The results the site offers are specific to the query and to the words used in the search."

SearchEngineWatch.com

June 20, 2008, Travel Search 2.0 – Know your Audience”

"At Uptake, they've opted to go with a theme-inspired model. Catering their content to some of the most popular sub-cultures in travel, such as girls' getaways, pet-friendly lodging, romantic trips, and family-friendly activities in every destination, you'll click through their site and quickly figure out which category you fall into."

BusinessWeek

June 19, 2008, Business Travel Guide – Web Sites

"Uptake.com (Kango.com) helps travelers search over one thousand websites for travel destinations, hotels, and entertainment. If you’re flying to an unfamiliar city on business, this site is a good place to find things to do in your free time."

Sacramento Bee

July 22, 2008, The To-Do List

"...if you can squeeze in a getaway, be sure first to check out the Uptake blog (www.uptake.com/blog). With features such as "Los Angeles on a $20 Budget" and "13 Reasons I Love My Hometown," the approach is down-to-earth, informative and wallet-friendly."

USA Travel Magazine

August 31, 2008, Travel Briefs and News

"The travel search and discovery engine UpTake has compiled the largest collection of affordable hotels and either free or cheap activities from around the Web, including beaches, parks, museums and campgrounds. With a few clicks UpTake can help you focus on fun, rather than funds from now and on through the Holidays and beyond."

Eye for Travel

June 26, 2008, Travel 3.0 Intelligent Agents offer an answer for too much content on the Web

"For its part, UpTake is improving the quality of the customer's web experience by collecting and correctly analyzing the facts and feelings in travelers' opinions and by understanding the user's intentions through application of a travel ontology."

AOL Travel Newsletter

August 22, 2008, Travel Website of the Week: UpTake
"UpTake is a travel information search engine that helps you decide where to go, stay, or what to do. Uptake has over 400,000 hotels and attractions and millions of travelers’ opinions. Visit Uptake.com."

VentureBeat

September 17, 2008, UpTake, the travel search engine that gets its traffic from Google, takes in $10M

"It has instead built a strategy almost entirely based around aggregating high-quality content from other sources."--Dan Kaplan

TechCrunch

September 17, 2008, UpTake Raises $10 Million in Series B Funding

"The funding round was led by Trinity Ventures, which ostensibly believes UpTake has a bright future ahead of it. Considering it’s competing in a well-trodden space where sites like TripConnect and TripHub have failed, it’ll be interesting to see if the travel search engine can transition from an SEO-driven strategy to a more natural uptake."--Don Reisinger

ZDNet

September 17, 2008, UpTake Announces $10,000,000 investment with a new Series B

"They’re applying some interesting semantic approaches in an attempt to enhance the quality of results."--Paul Miller

TheDeal.com

September 17, 2008, UpTake travels in style with $10M

"It searches more than 1,000 other travel sites and scours the Web for other travelers’ opinions to provide matches to help people make better travel decisions."

Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal

September 17, 2008, Travel Search Site UpTake gets $10M

"UpTake will use the new funding to expand search functions, invest in technology to improve travel recommendations based on analysis and filtering of collective intelligence, and pursue opportunities to grow the company through acquisitions,"

MSNBC

February 20, 2008 Online Comparison Sites Move Beyond Price

"Consider the newest kid on the meta-search block, Kango.com, which should probably be called a meta-research site."--Rob Lovitt

Jupiter Research

December 19, 2007, Travel Review Aggregator Kango goes live

"I’ve been talking for a long time about the need for online travel to better mimic the traditional travel agency experience of providing recommendations based on preferences. Kango is an exciting example of how this is possible, making travel planning easier and delivering qualified leads to travel providers."--Diane Clarkson

The BOOT

Sunday, January 6, 2008, Kango Sessions:  Interview with Kango President Yen Lee

"The search knowledge of the Kango team is clear. Also the product looks good."--Tim Hughes

HotelMarketing.com

December 19, 2008, Travel Review Aggregator Kango Goes Live

"Travelers can now create a more satisfying vacation experience thanks to Kango, a search and discovery application that aggregates and organizes the myriad of the internet’s travel community and review sites into one place."

Tourism Internet Marketing

December 19, 2007, New Travel Search Engine Kango Goes Into Private Beta"

Kango will “save me time, make it easier to travel, and lead to better trips….In my opinion…a site worth watching”.--Jens Thraenhart