Vacation rental giant HomeAway has acquired Second Porch, a service which allows homeowners and professional rental companies to promote properties through social media.
Terms of the deal to buy Second Porch, which has five members on the team, were not disclosed as part of the announcement today.
Second Porch works by putting the process of searching for a vacation rental property into social media, namely Facebook.
Properties owners market through dedicated Facebook pages (like fan pages), giving friends and friends-of-friends the ability to learn more about the property and owner. Likewise, owners can understand more about who might be renting the property.
After establishing a subscriber base in recent years, Brian Sharples et al have seen how the Second Porch technology might integrated into the vast HomeAway empire and snapped up the company.
Officials says Second Porch will close to new subscribers immediately and existing customers will be transitioned to the main HomeAway service.
The Second Porch site will eventually be shut down, once transition of the technology into HomeAway is completed.
"With the acquisition of Second Porch, HomeAway has the ability to accelerate the integration of social marketing across its network of sites, providing an additional word-of-mouth marketing channel to its owners, property managers and travelers."
Here, co-founder Brent Hieggelke explains how the service works in detail:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAgQhadhujE