SCVNGR & HomeFinder.com Partner to Make Home Buying Fun

New Cutting-Edge Mobile Social Campaign Is a First for Real Estate Industry


BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - July 8, 2010) -  Google Ventures backed technology company, SCVNGR, announces today a first-of-its-kind partnership with HomeFinder.com. The goal? Simple. Make buying a home fun!

The HomeFinder.com Race for the Home event in Atlanta is the first real estate campaign to leverage the location-based gaming frenzy. And they're doing it by building on SCVNGR. SCVNGR is a game and playing is simple. Go places. Do challenges. Earn points!

HomeFinder.com, a leading online real estate site, will create special challenges at featured listings from top Atlanta real estate brokers. Up to 1,000 qualified home buyers will participate in the HomeFinder.com Race for the Home on Saturday, September 18.

They'll compete by playing SCVNGR, visiting the different locations and doing challenges to earn points. Participants will have to learn something unique about each listing in order to complete the challenges and will accumulate points as they progress through the game. Agents and brokers will get to interact with the contestants at each stop -- making it a great time to feature actual for sale homes and have fun with a targeted local home buyer audience. At the end of the day, the top scorer will win an incredible grand prize of a large down payment toward their dream home.

SCVNGR has already executed over 100 successful Diamond Dash events nationwide with a similar model. Hundreds of targeted couples in the wedding/engagement stage applied for their chance to compete in an elaborate treasure hunt incorporating various landmarks, challenges and checkpoints in their city, to ultimately find the hidden treasure: a $25,000 diamond engagement ring.

"It's all about reaching home buyers in a meaningful new way and forming a lasting connection. The convergence of fun, gaming, mobile and social is a really powerful way to achieve that," says Mark Tepper, VP of Sales and Business Development at HomeFinder.com. "SCVNGR has built an incredible platform that uses fun to engage people and we're excited to work with them to run this campaign and help connect our agent and broker customers more dynamically to people searching for a home in Atlanta."

"Brands around the globe are beginning to realize that fun is a serious business," says Michael J. Hagan, Chief Operating Officer of SCVNGR. "The companies that are speaking to consumers on their terms have the opportunity to make real connections and, in the end, do more business." 

The event in Atlanta is the first of ten real estate events that SCVNGR will be running in different cities in 2010.

More and more hyper-connected young professionals rely on the internet or their mobile devices for their real estate research. The HomeFinder.com Race for the Home is a mobile social game that appeals to these consumers and gives them a compelling reason to come out for a day, meet the brokers and agents in Atlanta, have a great time and maybe even walk away with a huge grand prize!

About SCVNGR
SCVNGR is a game. Playing is simple: Go places. Do challenges. Earn points! SCVNGR is played via a free iPhone/Android app. Any individual or enterprise can also build on SCVNGR by adding challenges at their favorite locations. SCVNGR is funded by Google Ventures and Highland Capital Partners. Visit www.scvngr.com to learn more.

About HomeFinder.com
HomeFinder.com has over 10 years of experience as one of the most trusted Web sites for consumers to search for a home and connect with a real estate professional. Distinguished by its inventory of 3.5 million comprehensive property listings and rich content, HomeFinder.com also provides simpler, more valuable online advertising solutions for agents, brokers and builders, combining the brand power of more than 130 local newspaper Web sites with exposure on a national scope, in a platform that tracks every phone call, email and click a consumer makes.

Owned jointly by three leading media companies, Gannett Co. Inc. (NYSE: GCI), The McClatchy Co. (NYSE: MNI) and Tribune Co., the HomeFinder.com Network includes The Arizona Republic, Chicago Tribune, The Miami Herald, Los Angeles Times and The Indianapolis Star. For more information, visit http://www.homefinder.com.

Contact Information:

Contact:
Michael J. Hagan
michael@scvngr.com
317.439.0837