Here is an interesting idea being developed by Russian travel search startup Jizo to tap into the social graph in Facebook to help people search for flights to see their friends.
The company, which launched in July this year, has been working with Facebook to develop the Flight Finder application within its existing fan page.
The project in its early stages and relatively simple at the moment, but essentially uses the location element from the member's profile, identifies the closest airports from their locations and then analyses the airline schedules between the two points to reveal the cheapest fares...
...and then automatically redirects the user to a page on the main website with flight information pre-populated on the screen, using the bar and line format adopted by Jizo when it launched.
In this case, London to Barcelona:
Co-founder and CEO Serge Lavrentyev says over time the application will be enhanced so that the results are displayed within the application itself, as well as perhaps showing a "flight" option against a user's name within the Facebook timeline.
So-called reverse search will also be included, allowing the user to establish which flights are available back from a location, as well being able to have multiple airports included in a search.
Friend filters will also be added, so users can quickly find a particular profile rather than having to scroll through an entire list of friends.