MANILA, Philippines--An application on popular social networking site Facebook aims to promote tourism by allowing users to share experiences among friends.

Filipino developers Melvin Dave Vivas and Karla Redor created ivebeenhere, a Facebook application launched early this month.

This simple application has so far attracted 160 users, according to its developers.

It allows users to share existing pictures on their Facebook albums accordingly into different tourist destinations, which are then transformed into mini-social networks from which the user can see ?travel buddies? or other users that have been to the same place.

To get things rolling, Vivas and Redor have set up around 20 tourist spots, collecting pictures from several photographers or ?pulling? them from hosting sites like Flickr.

?We thought about making an app that will allow users to share experiences with their friends and even to those not in their networks but are interested to visit places they?ve been to,? said Vivas who previously worked for local carrier Smart Communications.

This is an example of how developers are able to take advantage of Facebook opening up its APIs (application programming interfaces) in order to create potential revenue-earning applications.

?It provides us a platform from which we can draw data from existing user profiles. We just need to work on our application and need not bother about creating social networks,? Vivas said.

So how exactly do they intend to earn revenue out of it?

By selling advertising space on the application itself, targeting airline companies or hotels and resorts, the developers said.

?We think of it as a platform by which advertisers can use to run promos, for example, that target a specific group of users based on their profiles,? Vivas said.