Trippy reboots as another social travel site searches for inspiration and answers

First travel planning got social, then the bevy of new sites got on board(s) in Pinterest fashion, and now many of the startups, including Trippy, are back to the starting line and rethinking their strategies.

With a report that there has been a management exodus and public relations blackout at Trippy, founder J.R. Johnson confirms to Skift that the social travel site "decided to make some changes in the management structure and resource allocation for the company."

Johnson didn't answer questions about what the main challenges are, but many sites in similar straits have had trouble making a business out of friend-driven trip recommendations for leisure travelers who may get up off the couch and on the road for vacations a couple of times per year.

Johnson provided scant details about how many people left the company and what new directions for the site and mobile app may be.

"We are 100% focused on product and making Trippy the best possible product for our users," Johnson says. "It's now me and our engineers working day in and day out testing and iterating towards the next version of Trippy."

In the past year, Goby and Wanderfly, which just got acquired by TripAdvisor, tilted toward  city discovery at the expense of travel planning per se, and Gogobot, too, emphasizes destinations over flights and hotels.

Trippy launched its public beta site a year ago, and it raised $1.75 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, True Ventures, SV Angel, and angel investors.

Johnson says developments at the company are not a "reboot, but a refocus."

Still, there are no hints yet as to what the next version of Trippy might be.