Funny how these things turn out – but Expedia Inc has bought the once heavily touted Trover for an undisclosed fee.
In short, Trover is a social travel guide in pictures, on desktop and mobile, enabling users to share photos and information about their neighborhoods and travels.
Trover has its roots in the hopes and dreams of a bunch of alums from Expedia’s early days – founder Rich Barton, Greg Slyngstad and Simon Breakwell.
The trio bought a content site known as TravelPost from Kayak in March 2010, as part of an ambitious attempt to create something that combined the then-game changing attributes of metasearch alongside user-generated content.
The dream team talked a good game but things started going awry when the launch of the new TravelPost was delayed, and by January 2011, the bulk of the staff had been given their walking papers.
Two-thirds of the dream team, with Barton remaining, had ceased playing active roles and a new idea was born: Trover.
TravelPost still had some money kicking about to use for Trover about from its $9.8 million Series A capital raise from March 2010 via General Catalyst Partners, Ignition Partners and Benchmark Capital.
Jason Karas, who initially headed product development at TravelPost become the CEO of Trover.
As a side-note: the TravelPost brand name eventually ended up in the hands of DealBase (now GoSeek), a company founded by Sam Shank in 2008 who then left in 2010 to launch HotelTonight. He, ironically, had originally started TravelPost back in 2004 before selling it to SideStep (which was acquired by Kayak in 2007).
GoSeek is now run by Clem Bason, former-boss of Expedia Inc-owned Hotwire.
Announcing the deal to sell to Expedia, Karas says:
“With over 450 million visitors across its brand websites every month, Expedia can dramatically increase the reach of Trover.
“This means your photos will have a much larger impact. Hopefully, many new visitors will see and be inspired by your travels.
“We’re also betting that some of these visitors will join our community, adding new voices, relationships, and killer images that fuel our passion for adventure.”
The website (and associated mobile applications) have wooed in some 200,000 travel images from around 6,000 destinations.
An Expedia official adds:
“At Expedia, it’s fair to say we believe in the power of travel. It can transform people. So an important part of our job is to inspire travelers.
“One way we do this is by igniting dreams through beautiful pictures of amazing destinations. We are excited to explore the compelling opportunities this partnership presents.”
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