Skift Take
Trover is a great little photo-sharing community, but it faces the same challenge that just about all startups face -- getting noticed, and in this case, as it labors in Instagram's shadows.
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- Pie Sisters in the Georgetown section in Washington, D.C. is worth stopping by for a much. [email protected]/Trover
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- The Rhode Island Statehouse in Providence has seldom looked better. Shawn Boyle, Trover
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- There is nothing like a summer sunset, as seen from Trenton, Maine. Mariah Dennis/Trover
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- Little Italy in NYC can be an artsy locale. Boon/Trover
Trover, a funded photo-sharing startup co-founded by former Expedia CEO Rich Barton and Jason Karas, until recently has been mostly for photography buffs and do-it-yourself local culture enthusiasts, but the business end of it is making a humble beginning as Trover announced the release of three photo-sharing widgets for destination-oriented websites, hotels, blogs, and foodie sites.
The startup, with $2.5 million in funding from Concur, General Catalyst, Benchmark and Barton, is no Instagram, of course, but the community-oriented website and iPhone app offer hundreds of thousands of photos, taken in 175 countries, and the are all geo-tagged, with some offering stories and tips for locals and travelers.
You can view the gallery above to get a small sampling of Trover users’ images.
The widget program grew out of Trover custom projects for fellow Seattle company Microsoft, specifically its Bing Travel, Windows and Windows Phone products and services.
The widgets being made available include the Trover Location Widget to highlight geo-targeted pics near a city, street, address or neighborhood; a Trover List Widget, meant for blogs to engage readers by depicting stories in a visual way, and a Trover Profile Widget, geared to publish photos, maps and tips “directly from the field,” Trover states.
Karas says Trover is offering the widgets for free, and there is no attempt to monetize the business at this stage.
“It’s all about getting exposure for our community and building our content base,” Karas says.
His goal is to make Trover a photographic encyclopedia that travel and tourism businesses and people can use for travel planning.
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Photo credit: Any ugly Rhode Island politics are all inside the building. From the exterior at night, the Rhode Island Statehouse looks iconic. Shawn Boyle / Trover