Back in 2000, the online real estate category flamed out with the rest of the “dot-com” universe. It was five cold years before innovation flowered once more.
That will never happen again.
Yes, there are plenty of failed Web 2.0 companies, thousands of silly apps. Many more are on the way. But there is no “Web 2.0 bubble” — just a constant fizz of development, trial, error and, once in a while, breakthrough success.
This is enabled, and will be sustained, by dramatically lowered barriers confronting technology innovators. One can get a product to market cheaper and more quickly than before. Distribution is cheaper. Hosting is cheaper. The web is a more open and fluid environment.
A corollary of this reality is that the dividing line between “real estate technology” and the rest of the technology world is fading fast. Back in 1999 there were hundreds of real estate technology companies and applications – everything from website platforms to transaction management suites – tailored to something often characterized as “The unique needs of brokers and agents.”
Today, those inside the industry are often better served by bypassing real estate specific vendors and applications to pick form the burgeoning flower bed of platforms, APIs and apps from outside the category.
Here are a few examples, plucked from just the past week of technology news:
- Google announced a new “What’s here?” feature in Google Maps. It gives the user – a home buyer, for example – a peripheral view around a point on a map. It’s available through the Google Maps API.
- Outside.in launched “Outside.in for publishers,” which allows website owners (e.g., a real estate brokerage, agent, or listings site) to integrate neighborhood level news, blog posts and tweets with their own content. This is a compelling addition to a listings detail page for a couple reasons: It’s fresh (indeed, in some cases, real time) and provides the user with a sense for the ambient noise of a place, the stuff charts and graphs can’t render.
- YouTube upgraded it channel designs and layout. Until now, creating a YouTube channel made sense for a lot of reasons – but a creating a cohesive brand experience was not one of them. Even large brand efforts like the (prematurely) celebrated Coldwell Banker channel have been limited by a kludgy interface. That’s no longer the case.
- BookFresh launched today. It’s an appointment-gathering application built primarily for small businesses: Plumbers, massage therapists, accountants … and Realtors. It’s slick, robust and represents a compelling alternative to real estate showing applications.
Of course, all these things are free or darn close to free.
Enjoy!
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Good post, Marc. I completely agree. The web can be a wonderfully forgiving place to put out ideas, test them, and discard them if they don’t work or build on them if they do. The ability to make constant iterations is what helps level the playing field between big box brokers and indies. Sure, we all have to deal with more noise (thousands of failed web apps), but the opportunities and potential partnerships of technologies far outweigh the negatives. I am really excited about real estate being seen more as a business than in days past.
Sorry, Brian! I meant to address my comment to you…Please accept my apology!
Great point, Brian. Leveraging tools like the ones mentioned above can add value if done well. However, they can also be a distraction when not integrated well or contribute little to the goals you’re trying to achieve on your site.
The biggest issue I see related to this is companies coming up with “content strategies” based around syndicating other site’s content. It’s certainly easier than creating original content, but doesn’t demonstrate a company or agent’s actual professional knowledge the way original content does.
One of the advantage of real estate business is that any one can enter it.
Brian … awesome update and info here for us all to use. I will be checking out Book Fresh next! Thanks again. Tom
Great links, thanks for the info. I completely agree, I do not think there is a “bubble” any longer because it is far easier to develop, deploy, host, and maintain web applications than it used to be. Not to mention with the better development tools and frameworks, a lot of the tedious error prone parts of programming do not exist anymore especially with the advent of interpreted web scripting languages.
[...] There is no Web 2.0 bubble – and real estate technology ain’t what it used to be by Brian Boero at 1000Watt Consulting [...]
@Ed
Good point about third party content versus brand created content. The latter is imperative for any company social media effort. There’s no faking or outsourcing it – if you want to be successful. Complementing property search with third party data/media is usually less problematic.
I agree with Ed & Brian–It’s all about the brand. So many will hop on the 3rd party bandwagon, but there are severe limits to this model. The two we see most often:
1) No branding capability – they might see your listing, but not your brand. Branding is essential to building a long-term & loyal customer base.
2)Many, if not most, of the 3rd party solutions allow almost TOO much freedom for the prospect to view the listings of the competition. I’m no fan of limiting information, but when it is your listings you’re trying to market, having them a click away from a hundred others is no fun. Your brokerage should create it’s own, yes, branded, user experience.
Real estate business entered into a new phase with the evolution of real estate web 2.0.
Online business become more profitable with real estate web 2.0.