TripAdvisor was founded in 2003 by Kaufer, Steinert, Shanny, and Palka. Although TripAdvisor ended up becoming, in part, a social site, according to Kaufer that was never really the intent. Of this, Kaufer says: “We started as a site where we were focused more on those official words from guidebooks or newspapers or magazines. We also had a button in the very beginning that said, ‘Visitors add your own review’, and boy, did that just take off.”
Sometimes a site takes on a life of its own. This seems to be exactly the case with TripAdvisor, which has resulted in its becoming something not quite like any other site to come before (or after) it.