A couple weeks ago, Frontdoor.com released its City Guides product [Disclosure: Frontdoor.com is a 1000watt Consulting client]. This is worth noting for several reasons. The user experience is first rate; the balance between content and design, data and vibe is pitch perfect; it supports the decision to live a life somewhere, not just to buy a house.
Their implementation of real estate-relevant APIs is well done. They've done a great job organizing Yelp reviews in each city, and display local events through eventful.
A slice of life
But it's their use of Flickr that got me thinking.
Flikr has been around for a long time. It has been plugged into thousands of websites and blogs. But the volume of geotagged photos it holds is now to a point where users can get a good visual sense for most any place. Frontdoor.com is taking advantage of this.
Check out Fairfield, CA
Or how about this: My wife is from Marshall, MN, a small town way out in corn country. Flikr brings it to life. This image illustrates why my wife now lives in California.
You get a slice of life from each of these places, usually seen through the eyes of people who live there. I may know that Athens is a college town, but now I can actually see what a University of Georgia college student looks like these days. I can look at a map of Marshall mashed up with points of interest, but this gets me deeper.
These photos pull you back from the tight focus on the home and touch on the blurry edges of decision making. And this, I think, presents really interesting possibilities for online real estate.
I am not certain what those possibilities will amount to. But the confluence of visual search, location awareness, Street View, online video, and massive stores of goetagged photos will get us closer to "virtual real estate" than we could have imagined even five years ago.
Something else to consider: There are hundreds of millions of photos sitting
within MLS systems across the country. Most brokers have thousands of images they're not using. We focus so much on listings data; is there hidden value in the images?
– Brian Boero
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A mist of difference
Agreed. Another great mashup (Flickr + Google Maps) is http://www.earthalbum.com
A most excellent comment. The first time I saw the web I had a "Blink" moment. It's about neighborhood and community, not houses.
Buying a house is a byproduct of finding the right neighborhood to live in.
And that's one of the reasons we've been in our home in Berkeley's Thousand Oaks neighborhood for over 25 years.
The future of online real estate must be a balnce of market statistics, engaging features and dynamic visual impact. A great example of this will be the soon to be released 1 Minute Housing Marketing product that is being offered up by FrogPond.com as a no cost marketing tool to the industry. For more information contact Susie Hale at susie@frogpond.com and I am sure she will be more than happy to give a preview.
clarification – the product is called the 1 Minute Housing Market
Check out the 1 Minute Housing Market product that FrogPond.com will be offering up to the industry. This great tool is the ideal balance between market statistics, engaging features and visual impact. Contact Susie Hale at susie@frogpond.com and I am sure she will be more than happy to give a demo or get you signed up.
[...] I think we’re going to move beyond mobile listings pretty quickly. I’ve written recently about creating a more richly visual online real estate experience, one that provides the user much [...]
The future of online real estate must be a balnce of market statistics, engaging features and dynamic visual impact. A great example of this will be the soon to be released 1 Minute Housing Marketing product that is being offered up by FrogPond.com as a no cost marketing tool to the industry. For more information contact Susie Hale at susie@frogpond.com and I am sure she will be more than happy to give a preview.