Real estate has been a passion and hobby of mine for some time. Recently I started thinking about whether the industry could be considered “web 2.0″-ified. In O’Reilly’s original discussion of web 2.0 and what it means, Tim O’Reilly made several comparisons between perceived 1.0 and 2.0 companies, such as Netscape (1.0) vs. Google (quintessential 2.0). A strong component of what most people consider web 2.0 today is whether a website is participatory – meaning does it have a community with capabilities like forums, sharing files or pictures, or social networking features.
In the real estate world, there are similar 1.0 vs. 2.0 comparisons that can be made. Like for example all the original For Sale By Owner companies (1.0) – ForSaleByOwner.com, FSBO.com, Owners.com, and the like. Most of these companies got their start in the 1999 era, and they still look it today. Conversely, a few web 2.0 real estate companies have arrived in the last few years – Redfin and Zillow are among the best known. Redfin even had the guts (or audacity?) to trademark “Real Estate 2.0“. Not sure how well that trademark will hold up over time…
But even among the small percentage of real estate companies that have 2.0 on the brain, most try to embrace web 2.0 concepts but really seem to miss the mark. While they may be AJAX-ed up, mashed up, loaded with Adsense and tie in with Google Maps, there isn’t one I have found that has a well integrated web 2.0 community. One could argue what would constitute “well integrated”, but for me it means the business offering to their customers has a strong community or social networking component as an integral part to the delivery of their service.
While it is true that real estate community sites exist – like Active Rain or Bigger Pockets – those sites are in and of themselves communities, not a real estate service that has a community as an integral part of their service.
In other industries, many examples abound – Salesforce, Flickr, Digg, eBay, Squidoo, Starbucks, Dell – the list goes on. But the Real Estate industry? <Sound of crickets>…
Tell me if you think I’m wrong.
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this article is surely help the customers in real estate business.
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