Two separate developments illustrating how some travel search engines are trying and some achieving modest success with projects outside of traditional metasearch.
Not announced as yet, but launched quietly over the past week, price comparison service Cheapflights has modified its Be Inspired tool from the main website (launched in January 2011) into an application on its Facebook page.
The idea is to let fans search for fares just by destination and a set time period, with results illustrated on a spinning globe.
If the results do not suit then the user simply spins the globe and another set of results are returned. Find the right fare and the user is sent off to the main Cheapflights.
Slightly gimmicky perhaps, but it's an interesting idea and a different method of searching for flight deals available on the main site.
The launch of the Facebook application comes just ahead of the price comparison site's first mobile application, scheduled for release in the next few weeks (assuming an invitation to an event in London is anything to go by).
Meanwhile, rival site Skyscanner appears to be reaping the benefits of being the first big UK metasearch engine to launch a mobile application.
The company says it has had one million downloads of its iPhone application - a figure achieved after just five weeks since the app was released to the iTunes appstore.
Skyscanner has secured third place in the most popular free travel apps in the appstore, ahead of the Hipmunk app (20) and Kayak's effort (30).
In the US, Hipmunk currently sits in 84th position, behind Skyscanner (40) and Kayak (5).