My thanks again to PocketListings for sponsoring this month’s Vendor Alley. As many of you know I’m a big supporter of innovation in this industry and its great to see new players stepping in with fresh ideas.
Like A Surgeon. Rob Hahn cuts into Trulia’s Sami Inkinen
Go read this…
Future of Listing Syndication Six Year After Birth
Then read this…
Trulia, Syndication, Confusion
’nuff said!
Google is getting out of real estate! -BREAKING NEWS
This is freaking huge news!
According to Google’s Lat Long Blog:
“In part due to low usage, the proliferation of excellent property-search tools on real estate websites, and the infrastructure challenge posed by the impending retirement of the Google Base API (used by listing providers to submit listings), we’ve decided to discontinue the real estate feature within Google Maps on February 10, 2011.”
1. No longer integrated on Google maps
2. No longer accepting data feeds
Read the whole post here:
All I can say is WOW!
“NASA never built a rocket…”
Great video about IBM and innovation.
It’s a bit longer but worth it. If you’re like me you might have this image of IBM of being a stodgy, “everybody wears a suit” type of company [kind of like PRC back in the day ; ) ]. This video, directed by Errol Morris, with music by Philip Glass, highlight some IBM’s innovations over the years.
One quote caught my attention (It’s about 30:40 in to the video). “NASA never built a rocket. NASA never built a space craft, NASA never built a computer.”
Which got me thinking about all the different vendors, from all the different industries out there. Those that make things. Getting to be part of creating products is the best part of what I do. If your lucky enough the things you create change everything, like being able to land on the moon.
Real Living launches new national website.
Competition is increasing on the national real estate franchise front. Real Living and GMAC Real Estate were both acquired by Brookfield Residential Property Services. The two companies were merged under the Real Living brand. The site was based upon LPS Real Estate Group platform. This is the first national real estate franchise site LPS Real Estate Group has hosted.
W&R Studios has had the pleasure of working with Matt Kaufman at GMAC Real Estate (now Real Living) , Brooks Burton (Real Living) and LPS Real Estate Group on this project. Lots of twists and turns.
Imagine this scenario; you have a huge Canadian corporation buy your company, then buy another real estate company, decide to go national as a single real estate brand. So you merge management teams, sell the new brand to your existing franchisors and hire a vendor and launch a new national real estate portal, all in about 12 months!
Having some experience with national real estate franchise portals I’d like to focus on one thing that’s great about LPS’s platform; Mapping. LPS has spent a lot of resources to ensure that their mapping display a full experience, including plot lines, roof top geo-coding, and bird’s eye views. Here some examples of what I mean.
Curiously Century21.com did not offer any birds-eye views of the home.
Now let’s take a look at what happens you when only offer part of the solution. On remax.com they draw plot lines, but lack of rooftop geo-coding which makes the result somewhat comical.
There are several things that I could call out but the mapping is the most demonstrative. It will be great to see how this site progresses, they are off to a great start!
Congrats to Real Living and LPS Real Estate Group!
February Vendor Alley Ad Sponsorship Available
Market Leader acquires kwkly.
Fresh off last weeks announcement that Keller Williams had chosen Market Leader for their eEdge platform the boys in Kirkland Washington are at it again and have announced the acquisition of kwkly.
Gotta wonder if this starts another round acquisitions as companies start to plan for a market recovery.
Congrats to both Market Leader and kwkly!
See full press release below:
____________________________________________________________
SOURCE: Market Leader, Inc.
Jan 20, 2011 09:00 ET
Market Leader® Acquires Mobile Software-as-a-Service Company kwkly
Innovative Lead Generation Tool Used By Leading Brokerage Companies Nationwide
KIRKLAND, WA–(Marketwire – January 20, 2011) – Market Leader (NASDAQ: LEDR) (http://www.MarketLeader.com), an innovator in online marketing and technology solutions for real estate professionals, has acquired kwkly, a mobile software-as-a-service lead generation platform. The innovative kwkly service has grown rapidly over the past two years and is now being used by some of the real estate industry’s largest and most prominent brokerage companies to successfully engage today’s tech-savvy home buyers and sellers.
kwkly provides home buyers with real-time access to detailed property information straight from the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) to their mobile phone. At the same time, kwkly connects real estate professionals with buyers immediately, giving them both the property information along with agent contact information for follow-up.
“kwkly is the most exciting tech tool I’ve seen for the industry, because of the speed, simplicity and value it brings both agents and the consumer,” said John Thompson, Executive Vice President of Intero Real Estate.
Market Leader’s acquisition of kwkly expands the offerings that the company can make available through its comprehensive business and marketing platform for real estate professionals. Kwkly has grown rapidly and brings customers associated with some of the real estate industry’s largest and most successful real estate franchise brands, including RE/MAX, Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc., Baird & Warner, Century 21, Prudential, Intero Real Estate and more.
“kwkly is an innovative service that has become an important lead generation tool for some of the nation’s most prestigious brokerage companies,” said Ian Morris, CEO of Market Leader, Inc. “We look forward to introducing this leading edge mobility solution to an even broader audience while helping our customers to achieve even greater success.”
For more information about kwkly, please visit www.kwkly.com. For more information on Market Leader and its products, visit www.MarketLeader.com.
About Market Leader
Market Leader (NASDAQ: LEDR) provides real estate professionals with innovative marketing and technology solutions that enable them to grow and manage their business. Founded in 1999 by a second-generation real estate agent, Market Leader provides real estate agents, agent teams, and brokerage companies with subscription-based real estate marketing software and advertising products that enable them to generate a steady stream of prospects, as well as the tools and training they need to convert these prospects into clients.
With a long history of innovation, Market Leader pioneered online lead generation for real estate professionals a decade ago and today is the leading marketing partner to the real estate industry. The company also provides consumers with free access to the information and tools they need throughout the home buying and selling process, such as determining house values by address, and providing access to real estate listings, through its national consumer real estate sites. These websites enable Market Leader to provide its customers with access to millions of future home buyers and sellers while providing these consumers with free access to the information they seek throughout the home buying and selling process.
For more information on Market Leader visit www.MarketLeader.com.
LEDR: CORPORATE
Investor Contact:
Mark Lamb
Director of Investor Relations
Market Leader, Inc.
425-952-5801
markl at marketleader dot com
Press Contact:
Matt Heinz
Heinz Marketing for Market Leader, Inc.
877-291-0006
matt at heinzmarketing dot com
Inside Trulia’s Boiler Room
The news just hit the wire. Trulia just took the term “interlopers” to a whole new level by opening a new inside sales office in the Denver Tech Center, in the same neighborhood as RE/MAX’s World Headquarters.
And they are hiring sales managers, sales reps, customer support, HR, their very own “boiler room”!
Dave Liniger, co-founder and Chairman of RE/MAX has been critical of sites like Trulia for being “the guy who shows up at a pot-luck dinner bringing only a fork.” And with a big move like this I thought it might be interesting to see what exactly Dave’s new neighbors will be doing just up the street.
Just how does Trulia’s sales team operate? Last week a post by Michael Arrington on TechCrunch blasted a new company for naming their new start-up, “SalesCrunch”. The founder of SalesCrunch is none other than the founding VP of Sales for Trulia, Sean Black. Small world.
On SaleCrunch’s site they have a section called “SalesSchool”.
Posted is a short video, named “how Trulia Scores and Process Leads” where Sean Black Interviews his former Trulia workmate Lead Generation Manager, Steve Rossi who talks about how Trulia sells products to agents.
It’s a must see for anyone in the business of selling to real estate professionals. Lots a good tips from someone in the front lines.
But then at about 1:10 in to the video Steve reveals something that I almost missed. Turns out Trulia mines the syndicated listing data, that powers their site, for valid prospects to sell their wares. Meaning agents who just sold a million dollar home get prioritized for a sales call to buy Trulia’s products.
Now I know that the listing data coming from syndicators like ListHub are stripped on many of the restrictions that a typical IDX vendor must adhere to. But this practice just seems wrong.
Typically most vendors are restricted from using MLS data to mine/contact agents. In fact many MLS providers seed their listings data with false e-mail addresses that flag when an unscrupulous vendor tries to use the data to market to their membership.
The irony here is that many agents and brokers have criticized sites like Trulia (and even Realtor.com) for using their own listing data to generate revenue (advertising) and charging the same agents to “enhance” their own listing data. Now it turns out they are also using the listing data to target who the best agents and brokers to sell to!
Something tells me that Trulia shouldn’t be heading over to RE/MAX to borrow a cup of sugar anytime soon.
UPDATE [ LOOKS LIKE SALESCRUNCH MADE THE VIDEO PRIVATE]
UPDATE 2 [LOOKS LIKE ITS BACK UP. WEIRD]
UPDATE 3 [ITS BACK TO BEING SET TO PRIVATE- What are they hiding?]
#Inforjb hits the presses
Not sure how many of you follow Russ Bergeron‘s Twitter feed or get his #inforjb emails. I like them a lot because he does a great job of sorting thru the junk and serving up good posts/articles regarding the industry. Nice when you are always searching for something interesting to blog about like me!
Recently Russ has implemented paper.li, which serves up his Tweets and links in a Newspaper like format. It’s a fun format and makes it easy to read. If you subscribe to it you’ll be notified of any updates. If you are a real estate news junkie like me it’s worth a look.
MOVE & AOL sitting in a tree L-I-S-T-I-N-G….
Needless to say this is a huge win for MOVE. But I don’t look at this deal as just one big thing. The story here is what’s been happening for the past 18 months. It seemed to me that at some point, maybe when Steve Berkowitz took over as CEO, they decided to stop playing nice and start getting aggressive.
I almost feel that the old MOVE would have reacted much differently when Zillow announced their partnership with Yahoo! Not now, it didn’t take MOVE too long to hit back, and AOL is a whopper.
Find, ListHub, (Deal I can’t talk about yet), and now AOL.
If they keep going this fast they are gong to have to change their name to VOOM!
