Twenty years ago the hostels of Kathmandu and beach bars of Ko Samui were full of young backpackers scrawling notes in well-thumbed diaries. When they felt the need to communicate with home – perhaps to ask dad to wire some money – they would take a bus to the nearest poste restante office.

Then in the 1990s thousands of travellers put aside their journals and stopped writing letters. With internet cafes appearing on every street corner from Bombay to Bangkok, they signed up for Hotmail accounts and started emailing friends and family with news of their latest adventures.

Now, in the 21st century, many backpackers have little time for email. Instead, they blog, uploading messages, photos, movie clips and podcasts to their personal online journals. One of the advantages of blogging over emailing is that you can create a document to keep and revisit in future years. It also allows you to contact fellow travellers and share tips, flick through each others’ photo albums and perhaps even arrange to meet in real life.

More than a dozen travel community websites have sprung up over the past decade – many of them hoping to become the MySpace or FriendsReunited of travel. Which are worth a visit? First, let’s identify the different types of travel community sites.

Blogging sites

If you want to share your travel diaries and photographs with friends and family – and a bunch of strangers – you can join a blogging site. Once you sign up, you can skim through other members’ diaries and, if you like the look of them, make contact. Examples include Globenotes.com, Travelblog.com, RealTravel.com, Mytripjournal.com and Travelpod.com.

Networking sites

The latest generation of travel community sites take their cue from MySpace, Bebo and Facebook. Travel tips and diaries take second place to the primary business of social networking. At sites like Wayn.com and Gusto.com you can browse through galleries of members’ photos, learn about their favourite places, send them messages and “make friends” with them – all without leaving the comfort of your desk. If it’s real-life encounters you want, try sites such as Couchsurfing.com, where you can find people to put you up for the night, and Virtualtourist.com, which claims to have close to 900,000 members and arranges regular meetings around the world.

Peer review sites

It is said that 10% of people planning a trip consult TripAdvisor, the most successful travel review site on the web. It claims to have more than 5million write-ups of hotels, restaurants, attractions and resorts, all given ratings out of 5. Tripadvisor and rivals including Priceline.co.uk are not for bloggers, but they do allow you to let off steam. And if used judiciously, they are useful research tools.

The lines get blurred

The lines between these three types of sites are becoming increasingly blurred as review sites and blogging sites dip their toes into the world of social networking. TripAdvisor, for instance, now allows users to pen their own personal profiles and upload videos. Some sites – including Travbuddy.com and Tripconnect.com – now straddle the line between blogging and social networking. They allow you to upload your travel diaries and photos while collecting new online “friends”.

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