Content Is King…And Content Creation Is The Key To Real Estate Technology Survival

Are Inline Video Search Results Really The End Game?

Instead of focusing on today’s benefit of having real estate video inline with search results, I’ll pose the question of “what will happen when potential visitors won’t need to go past Google pages for real estate information?” 

Thinking About Today Is Easy:  Take The Next Logical Step

Imagine an expanded Google universal search with listings presented inline with search results from Google Base for your search term, listings in adjacent areas geolocated with GeoRSS,  real estate video from YouTube, and photos from Google’s photo search.  Are we really that far right now from this scenario and, if we are not, why will people even visit real estate websites in the not-so-distant future if all of the information that they need is inline?

Possible Impacts on Real Estate Technology Industry

The future of running a viable business in real estate technology isn’t too hard to see.  Here are some places where viable business models will be hard to find:

– Presentation mechanisms: what percentage of people will click through to sites once competing listings and videos are presented in line with search results?  If the business model is primarily dependent on a presentation mechanism for listings or video, that business will be disintermediated rather quickly.

– Mashups of freely available data: The biggest issue here is barrier to entry – if the business model isn’t based on some new and not-so-easily acessible data (also qualifies as “content”) then even new approaches will quickly become commiditized.  Example: encoding US address information is commiditized.  However, gaining access to unique and helpful datapoints such as public transportation stops isn’t so easy to gain. Unique and difficult to gather content will always bring users.

If we think about the conceptual process for content as the following:

1) Conceptualization => 2) Access To Unique Content => 3) Content Creation => 4) Metadata Generation => 5) Search/Sort Capability=> 6) Presentation Mechanism

It is then reasonable to assume that the only areas not susceptable to disintermediation in the near term are #1, #2, and #3.  Google for example is hard at work improving #4, #5, and #6 – not much successful business model to be left there…

Unique Content Remains King

So unique content creation will clearly remain king (for a long while at least)…visitors will continue to value and seek out unique content thusly provide the foundation for viable business models.  Content in the form of written and multimedia blog posts, articles, photos, interviews, and local information will become the differentiator among organizations not the presentation mechanisms.  I suspect that NAR understands this with respect to the recent interactions between Move.com and Google (this also strengthens my suspicions as to Google’s motives above).  NAR’s unique content is their listing database with controlled access – far different from the average FSBO listing. 

Legitimate Winners In The Syndication Space May Be Close To Being Crowned

Although there is clearly a renewed call for the creation of real estate video, the syndication winner  in this space might already be in the process of legitimately being crowned (especially if the above scenario were to fully play out). Hint: the winners aren’t real estate video companies but large search companies. (UPDATE:  I have received confirmation that the only results to be displayed inline in search result will be YouTube or Google Video for the moment though this could change.)  The key point is that people have to get to a page to see *your* listing, mashup, or video player – if the visitor gets the info that they need before arrivig to your page, your ranking results won’t matter too much because you’ll never be seen.

Competing With “Free” And “Easy” Doesn’t Make Sense

Without a sustainable independent syndication business model, only the content creators and those with access with unique content will be left standing in the real estate video, mashup, and re.net listing spaces. It isn’t about being a “play” – it’s about building a business. Those that focus on easily commiditized presentation mechanisms will likely fall on hard times; those that conceptualize and create unique, hard to access content will survive. Those that don’t create content and base a business model on simply taking a revenue percentage from content creators are ultimately competing against “free” and “easy” – something that content creators will soon figure out.

Thoughts?

Post script: Here’s an interesting extension of this line of thinking…what if the “price” of a free real estate mapping mashup was that the data presented is stored for later use by Google?  As such, the real estate industry would have become the largest free labor pool for geolocating updated data about real properties and other related content throughout the US….with less effort and more participation than the big “Z”.

Technical Thoughts: Moving Towards Transition Of The MLS

Little did I realize the hidden blog treasures to be found in Maureen’s Carnival of Real Estate #35 winning choices this week…the following article is a bit technical so I apologize in advance.

 In a different posting from his winning Carnival post, the FBS blog talks about the ideal layout of the MLS (emphasis his): “I think the best approach is a combination of a national data repository and the data exchange approach.  Each MLS should send data to a national repository and, in exchange, each MLS should then be allowed to download all or part of the repository to their local MLS system.  Perhaps it could be called MDX for MLS Data Exchange.”

He goes on  to say:

“Although there are advantages to a single repository and I certainly recognize that a single repository may be the most elegant long-term solution, I believe the data exchange model would allow the industry to move towards a national repository system faster and so is the right next step. “

An Alternative Suggestion

A virtual single repository that exists only in the form of a set of standardized national interfaces might be an alternative approach that may work just as well as a physical single repository. Is a physical national data repository really needed? The national repository could just as easily be virtual in nature (much like a webservice) that would only need to have a minimal physical presence; in fact it could be as simple as an standardized interface, some format and location metadata as well as some transaction history. This alternative approach seems (on the surface at least) more efficient for all parties, less labor-intensive both upfront and on an ongoing basis, leverages existing standards work, would remain virtually transparent to the end-user, and fits well with a transaction based revenue model. 

The specific suggestion would be to have a national data interface that knows where to find, transform, and consume local data when called by a user.  There would not be any specific national datastore just a set of “national interfaces”. The national interface would function just as local interfaces do today – the difference is that the national datastore would only be single virtual version of all local data.  In short, the national system would store only a minimal amount of data and would be focused more on 1) where to find requested data and 2) transform that data into the standardized format for consumption by the end user – classic middleware.

We use such a system today within the ForSaleByLocals infrastructure for our 2GB of geolocation data that sits unchanged in its original format (which is only 60% usable by us) but is transformed into a format that usable only upon request and is then consumed in the transformed format. 

Advantages of This Suggestion:

– Traditional Advantages: All of the advantages listed in the FBS blog that argue for remaining with a distributed local architecture (Speed of implementation, Scalability and Redundancy, Persuasion)

– Storage: Local data would be remain local. Data from a local MLS would only be transformed into a standardized format as part of the request for transit via the national interfaces. In one scenario, the national interfaces would only be a conduit for local information.  Operational metadata (requests, data passed, etc.) would also be stored at the national level.  However, I can think of another scenario where any additional data or metadata required by the National system would be stored locally.  Why pay to store data twice?

– Transactions: Data transactions would remain strictly within the local system and the national system would be just another consumer of local data (much like any other website or app). Data would only be moved when it is needed (how I despise moving data!).  There would be no need for a constant data pump to update a centralized location or any of the resulting issues with distributed transactions, locking, etc. Bandwidth charges would only be incurred only when data is moved as part of a consumable and verifiable transaction rather than just as part of regular system updates. Any additional incremental costs of such a system would be easily trackable and chargeable based on historic data.

– Implementation and Legacy Support: Software service providers would simply call the appropriate data interface for the job (a standardized national or the legacy local interface).  The national interface would be used for any data outside of one’s local area.  There would be no change to existing apps or sites that rely on legacy interfaces.

– International Scability: As other associations such as the Dominican Republic, Mexico and others bring national MLS-like data online, they’ll easily be able to plug into an existing system that will make such properties accessible via the same interfaces that I am suggesting. You knew that I had to bring international into this somewhere, right?

We are not a player in the MLS debate so this post is only some thinking about the technology itself and does not deal with any other issues that might not have to do with technology. All things are easy for those that dont have to execute  🙂 Hopefully, this post can at least add to the body of discussion forming around the MLS technical issues with FBS, Greg Swann, NAR, Trulia, and others. 

Four New Real Estate Property Videos Posted in English

We finally got to post more property videos in English over at http://vidlisting.com. The most recent four real estate videos are from the city of Santa Cruz, Bolivia and posted via the Casa & Casa Real Estate Agency.  Enjoy!

Costa Rica Real Estate Video Interviews – First 7 Posted

We started to post the first 7 of approx. 22 real estate video interviews from Costa Rica.  Five of the real estate video interviews posted today are in English and two are in Spanish.

The five English language real estate video interviews include:

 Scott Oliver – Author and owner of http://welovecostarica.com. They have 100s of articles and living and investing in Costa Rica.  Watch the video.

Osvaldo Quezada Vasquez – Architect and developer of Residencias Santiago on Playa Agujas which is a laid back beach a few miles north of Jaco Beach.   Watch the video.

Daphne Rochester – Owner of a full service real estate agency right in Jaco, Costa Rica. They do everything from legal help to GIS support to financing. Watch the video.

CONCASA – We interviewed the owner and general manager of CONCASA which is a Venezuelan construction firm building very moderately priced condominiums in Costa Rica’s capital city of San Jose. These condos might be a solution for those on a limited relocation budget. Watch the video.

Thierry Lambert – Thierry is an agent working with a real estate sales company in Quepos, Costa Rica called Costa Rica Base. They are involved in a number of projects in the Quepos area. Watch the video.

In all, we have a good 35-40 real estate video interviews that we have filmed during this trip to Central America that still need to be processed and posted.  Looks like busy days ahead for our video and sound engineers….

More Real Estate Videos Posted

I just posted another 20 or so real estate videos for properties in Santa Cruz, Bolivia on http://vidlisting.com.  About 8 of the the real estate videos are in English and the rest are a mix of Spanish and Portuguese.

Also, our video and sound engineers worked yesterday and are in the studio working today to get the real estate video interviews from Costa Rica posted within the next day or so. As always, the vast majority of our interviews and property videos are available in online format (starts immediately with no waiting) and also in downloadable iPod ready MP4 format.

Also, forgot to note in yesterdays post that while we have one video team in Nicaragua and Panama, we will also have a second video team returning to Brazil to do more interviews and produce more property video in the Sao Paulo area…there is a good chance that they will also head off to Rio as well.

More Real Estate Video Posted Today

We’ve posted more english language real estate videos today over on http://vidlisting.com.  They basically consist of a  bunch of online property videos and the Sivercon Construction video translated into Spanish from the original Portuguese.  Gina also went out to do an real estate video interview in Spanish today with an architectural firm in Santa Cruz in preparation for future trips. We look forward to having that interview posted tomorrow or the next day.  One note of bad news: I’m not feeling well today and its the end of the work day in Bolivia so I’m not 100% sure that we’ll have all of the real estate video transcripts posted today. 

 We’ll see… 

Sivercon Construction – Sao Paulo Brazil – Video in English

We just posted an interesting real estate video highlighting Sivercon’s commercial properties in Sao Paulo, Brazil.  Sao Paulo, Brazil is now one of the world’s largest cities.  Sivercon is one of the construction companies that we interviewed (in Portuguese) during our trip to Sao Paulo. The video provides an interesting view into a part of the world that many may not know about.  If nothing else, you’ll see that Sao Paulo is a sophisticated and modern city that rivals many first rate cities in the US or Europe.

Watch The Video

Sivercon kindly provided us a six minute corporate video produced by them and gave us permission to provide an English narrative. We’ve posted the video in English on http://vidlisting.com in the two usual formats, online Flash video and iPod ready Mp4 downloadable video.  Transcripts should be posted tonight along with a bunch of other video transcripts that need to be posted. Of course, for those that might not know, we are also able to provide video narratives, file conversions and transcript support to/from Spanish, Portuguese, and English for all types of video.

Enjoy

Another 10 or so Real Estate Videos Posted In English

We’ve done some catching up over this holiday period and just posted another group of real estate videos in English over at http://vidlisting.com.  In addition to the videos already posted this morning, we are hoping to put up another 6-10 property videos in English later this afternoon as well as another real estate video interview in Spanish. UPDATE: The second group of 5 property videos are up as well as the interview in Spanish. 

Thanks to our real estate team for finishing up this video set in Flash and Ipod-ready MP4 formats before a new set of videos arrives in the new year. 

You can keep up with all of the new real estate video in English by pointing IE7, Firefox, or any RSS feedreader to http://vidlisting.com/RSS/feed.rss and subscribing.  We’ll have subscription email ready in the next few days as well.

Progress Report – Third Month

It’s our second full month live with a few extra weeks sprinkled in there. Our numbers are not very impressive but definitely indicate growth so things are looking up as we swing into the new year. 

 Highlights as of this blog post:

– We’ve posted 185 property videos (74 portuguese, 39 English, 72 Spanish) which is an increase of 98 videos from this time last month.  We also have another 30 or so property videos in process of translation/recording this week. 

– We’ve posted 25 interviews with 16 real estate industry professionals in Spanish, 2 in English, and 7 in Portuguese.  We have another 5 or so in the process of being edited.

– We’ll have 21 real estate web sites running on our forsalebylocals web engine by Christmas.

– Our video sites are now getting just shy of 1000 unique IP visits per day compared to just over 1000 unique IP visitors for the entire month of November.  Average page views are increasing as we increase content. Our daily top 5 videos are being viewed a total of approx. 150 times per day in Spanish, 120 times per day in Portuguese and about 60 times per day in English.  UPDATE: For the entire month of Nov 2006, we had 2862 videos viewed.  From 1 December through 20 December 2006, we’ve had 19,891 videos viewed (just 5 video views/day shy of 1000 average daily video views) with 15 videos viewed over 200 times.

– We have received feedback from the agencies that we represent that they are beginning to receive emails and calls from international buyers interested in properties that they have seen on our web site.

– We’ve added video downloads and language specific transcripts to our offering on the video sites

– We’ve added a main RSS feed for each language that allows users with feedreaders, Firefox, and IE7 to get video updates pushed directly to them as updates are posted. I expect that email generated from RSS will be ready by end of year as well.

– We should have a completely configurable real estate specific flash video player ready before the end of the year.  We’ve had some delays on this due to a particular usage scenario that we think will differenciate our player from any other video player that we’ve seen. 

– We’ve successfully tested video streamed to cell phones from our site – expect to see that sometime in the near future.

– We have booked a number of interviews for our upcoming trip to Central America

Lowlights (a.k.a. some areas where we have to do better):

– We need to better articulate the value proposition of increasing the pool of potential buyers to our US and European readers and also make adding videos easier

– we’ve built a video upload capability but are a bit behind on our automated video rendering infrastructure. We have functioning code to encode uploaded videos into various formats and the nebulus of the required server farm…we need to make the code more “beefy” to handle rendering requests in parallel. We hope to make real progress on this over the holiday and the early part of January.

– we’re ready to implement a payment gateway on another site that we own/host; we need to make the changes needed to accept secure payments on all of the real estate sites as well.

– Our geolocation functionality is tied into registration and listing management.  We need to activate this functionality before the end of the year.  We really haven’t focused as well as I would have liked in this area and need to revisit our efforts in this area.

Feel free to contact me at tony@forsalebylocals.com with any questions, comments, suggestions, or thoughts. I’ll be available over the entire holiday season while the staff takes a well deserved break.

Stay tuned and have a nice holiday

Tony

RSS Feeds For The Real Estate Video Sites Are Up and Running (iPod Video Too)

With over 155 property videos spread over 3 languages, we’ve finally added language specific RSS feeds for our three video sites (http://vidlisting.com in English, http://bienesraicesvideo.com in Spanish, and http://imoveisvideo.com in Portuguese).   This group of feeds includes property videos and interviews. We plan on breaking these feeds down into property and interview specific feeds later on.

English RSS feed at http://vidlisting.com/RSS/feed.rss 
Spanish RSS feed at http://bienesraicesvideo.com/RSS/feed.rss
Portuguese RSS feed at http://imoveisvideo.com/RSS/feed.rss

Many of the videos are also downloadable in iPod format…they all are converted – uploading the iPod ready videos takes time.  By next week, all of the videos should have downloadable iPod ready video and language-specific transcripts.

Enjoy.