Big Ideas In Web 2.0 - 1000Watt Consulting

Marc Davison and Brian Boero of 1000WattConsulting have created a nifty guide to track resources in the universe of Web 2.0 and real estate. Marc and Brian's new consulting company has been designed to help real estate companies plot their course through this new universe. Their recent "call to arms' for MLS' to add more Web 2.0 features like RSS and social networking is an interesting topic for discussion considering many associations are just now seeing the value in creating public portals to support their membership base.

What are your thoughts on MLS' adding social commentary to listings? I'm pretty sure in most markets it will be an uphill battle against conventional wisdom. What are the ramifications of a broker using an IDX feed to display listing data with their own social commentary components added to the mix? Would it meet the muster of the rules regarding broker reciprocity or would it get the same smackdown that Redfin experienced with their blogging effort? Food for thought.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 1000Watt Consulting RSS Real Estate

Wired Says Supersize Your RSS

Theres a good article in Wired today about RSS. It explains a bit about how Vista (Windows) will impact RSS and how to get the most out of your feeds. There are some links to a few tools that I wasn't aware of for managing feeds via e-mail etc.

"We recently tested a number of RSS services that help "power users" do more with news feeds. Offerings from internet giants like Google and Yahoo team up with software from smaller, niche players like RMail, RSSfwd and Feed Shake to custom tailor the feed-reading experience in a number of ways."

To be honest with you, I only use a Windows box when I have to. That said, it's the business I am in so our work stations must have Macs and PeeCees in a co-existent habitat. From what I've heard Vista is real hog on processor, memory and video space, so it looks like some of the current PeeCees may have to move to the donation pile at worthy charity. Anybody have any idea of a worthwhile cause able to put them to good use?

How Podcasting Impacts Local Search Relevancy

ClickZ has an article today from Patricia Hursh regarding the relevancy of local search. The article breaks down personal decision criteria, proximity and vertical search sites.

Regarding proximity, Patricia says:

"Today, proximity is typically the most important factor in presenting local search results. If a searcher includes a city name, Zip Code, area code, or address in her query, listings are usually ranked according to proximity to that particular location.

Unfortunately, with this approach consumers often have to sift through thousands of returned listings. Certainly not all these businesses are really relevant. Yet they're included in results simply because they have a name, qualified address, and phone number."

It's important when looking at the metrics of your web or blog traffic to identify the keywords and phrases people use in search engines to find your site. (If you do not have a good log file analysis tool, try Google Analytics, it's free and generates great data.) As Internet empowered consumers become more adept at searching in ways that cut through the clutter of millions of irrelevant results, they become more specific in the criteria they use. As mentioned by Patricia, street addresses are an example. We've known for some time now that a well distributed podcast feed provides an impressive amount of direct referral traffic to our client's web sites. In fact, one client receives over 3 times as much direct traffic from one podcast directory as they do from Realtor.Com. That's just the tip of the Iceberg. If you look at the long tail of direct traffic from their podcasting effort, they generated in the month of December a total of 138 direct referrals from podcast directories, 37 direct referrals from the local MLS site and a total of 28 direct referrals from all Realtor.Com sites including realestate.aol.com. (Yes, this client pays for enhanced listings with Realtor.Com) This client has also shown a steady increase in total page views since introducing podcasting from an average of 3,000 to now over 4,000 per month. Pretty impressive.

Now let's take a look at the impact of locality on organic search results in Yahoo and Google. The top referral by far to our client's site was Google organic searches. We know that a large portion of organic searches are the result of the widespread distribution of their podcasting RSS feed.

We decided to do a test using the street name of a podcast as an example of how someone might search. We used just the street name (no numbers) of the listing along with the name of the subdivision or neighborhood in Google. It was absolutely amazing. In almost every instance the search results dominated not only the first few results of the page, in some cases the first three pages generated results from a podcasting directory, or directly to the XML file used for the feed.

Digging further, we started using phrases from the descriptions of properties, specific community phrases and more and we were pleased to find our client show up in the top results just about every time. As I've mentioned before, the underlying technology of syndication that helps make this happen is nothing new, in fact it's been around a long time. It's just recently that it has become an integral part of the web and computing in general.

I've found the "RE.Net"* to be somewhat infatuated with web video lately. And that's great. But most of the fawning is over media that assumes someone is looking at property listing or web content in the first place. Video podcast distribution, when done right, provides not only a means to enhance a listing or content, it provides a a powerful new way to drive relevant, local traffic.

Want to know more? E-mail me. I'll be glad to give you a personal demonstration.

*I'm not sure if it was Greg Swann that originally coined RE.Net, but it sounds a damn site better than "blogosphere", wouldn't you agree?

The Impact of RSS

Really Simple Syndication. I'm pretty sure most of you are tired of hearing about it. I'm also pretty sure that most of you haven't really given any thought to the impact it will have on the future of computing. While reading an article in Mary Jo Foley's Microsoft blog on ZDNet, it revealed a quote from an MS engineer that should put it in perspective.

"But over on Microsoft's Channel 9 site, Bruce Morgan, a software development manager on the IE team, who describes his job as "lead(ing) the Vista RSS platform, IE UX (user experience), and IE setup teams at Microsoft," confirmed that builds of the next version of IE do, indeed, exist."

When MS finally gets around to rolling out it's new operating system, you'll begin to get an idea of just how much this technology will mean to every application you use.

The early adopters that have started distributing their content and media via RSS feeds are already seeing a return on their investments. With the latest innovations in software development, the best is yet to come!

RSS Patents?

Business 2.0 reports on Microsoft patent applications for RSS. I'm not a big fan of software patents. Most of them are completely indefensible and in most cases they tend to slow progressive technologies. I agree with some that say this is more of defensive move on MS' part than anything else. By filing the patents, any patent troll holding a previously filed application will have no choice but to make themselves known. That will force the rest of the industry to trot out prior art. It's clear that MS, and the rest of the software industry for that matter, will be reliant on RSS as a key component to future application development. If this is a preemptive move, it could make sense on MS' part. Microsoft recently lost a high profile ruling regarding a patent that covered the embedding of multimedia elements in web documents from a multimedia spin-off of the University of California. The changes made to the Internet Explorer browser as a result of the ruling forced developers to completely re-code documents in order to properly display embedded multimedia content. I know of many companies that are still in the process, months later, of re-coding pages that have embedded Quicktime and Java content. If you look at the whole portfolio that Eolas holds, it can be a pretty sobering thought. It looks as if Eolas exists only to hold and defend their patents. They have no products that I am aware of that put them to use. For instance

"U.S. Patent 6,616,701, Filed on May 23, 1998, Issued September 9, 2003

This invention turns full-motion video into a fully-interactive experience. Imagine, for example, being able to view a movie trailer and being able to click on individual actors, as they move across the screen, to bring upWeb pages with more information on their bios, other films, etc. Or imagine that you're watching a video of the 1996 NBA finals, and being able to click directly on any of the players at any time to retrieve their stats, where they are now, etc. The zMap technology makes all that possible, and more."

Imagine it? I don't have to. Hotspots in video like QTVR movies and more have been around for as long as I can remember. I still have an application that I bought in 1996 that has this feature (2 years before the original filing). Surely there was some prior art somewhere that demonstrated this before the awarding of this patent.

I believe in protecting intellectual property, however, the USPTO has horrible track record of approving patent applications for software that, in my opinion, should have never seen the light of day. It's spawned a whole new industry whose sole purpose is to acquire patents and then apply pressure on companies of all size to give up license fees. If the thousands of start-ups basing development of new web applications on RSS are faced with the prospect of being strong-armed by patent trolls, the whole industry will suffer. Those that survive will be forced to pass those costs along to their customers. Only time will tell what will happen with the RSS patents. It's certainly something we will need to keep a keen eye on as we move forward.