On Localism & Future of Online Real Estate

Ajax and Cassandra

Over at my personal blog, I started one of those Cassandra deals speculating on the future of ActiveRain network now that Trulia has launched a blog platform. Since that post went up, I had a chance to sit down with Jonathan Washburn, the founder of ActiveRain, and learned a thing or two. A followup post was necessary. But more I thought about it, more it seemed appropriate for the OnBlog, as my thoughts on the situation are relevant to our clients past, present and future.

First, J-Dub (you Washingtonians ought to get the reference) pointed out that ActiveRain isn’t exactly a slouch in the consumer traffic side of things — as he clarified in the comments to the post, ActiveRain and Localism got 2.3 million visits in the last 30 days, and he said some 80%+ of that is consumer traffic. Second, he charted out a future view of online real estate that is rather convincing. It goes something like this (and I’m probably not doing full justice to his views):

• Consumers want listings above all else
• But listings are everywhere
• Hence, listings are a commodity
• Differentiation can only come from original content
• ActiveRain has 100,000 dedicated local real estate professionals who love creating original content, especially about their local market
• Adding listings to ActiveRain & Localism isn’t the most difficult thing in the world, especially if the trend towards aggregation and syndication continue
• Adding original content, however, is extremely difficult and time-consuming
• Therefore, Localism will dominate all

You know, that’s a pretty convincing point of view. Strategically, it’s sound. There is a trend towards listings aggregation and syndication — a trend that is taking far, far too long to develop, to be sure, but one that has the force of inevitability behind it.

However, strategy is only as good as the execution. And this is where I, as a member of Onboard Informatics, can offer some thoughts that are relevant to all of our clients (and future clients).