“The future belongs to crowds”
- Don Delillo, Mao II
It has been three weeks since Facebook announced its Open Graph API and social plugins. This was a polarizing event. Some believe Zuckerberg revealed himself as an evil geek-savant orchestrating a carnival of counterfeit cares; others believe we have just crossed into a time of marvelous possibility.
Me? I’m not sure. I’ve had plenty of fun conversations about this recently, but right now I’ll stick to just one question:
“Will Facebook’s recent moves impact real estate?”
A few weeks ago, Marc envisioned “Pandora for real estate” – a property search app that could surface the perfect home by learning your preferences and comparing them against those of all who had gone before you. It seemed far-fetched a month ago. Not so today.
Now we have billions of “likes” registered all over the web, pin pricks of intention that can be combined into a form of intelligence. And the social interaction and learning that takes place within the walls of Facebook can now be woven into any site with ease.
3 of your friends like this refrigerator; how about you?
Most people your age like these restaurants; care to join them?
If you’re looking at this home you’d probably like these, right?
This sort of stuff is pretty exciting because it could allow us to make better decisions faster. Or meet people with whom we might form meaningful relationships. But it could also rob real estate (and indeed many things) of the sort of journey that, while messy, makes for a life of diversity and self-discovery.
But back to the point: Imagine if Realtor.com implemented the Facecook “like” and “recommendations” plugin on every listing and implemented the Open Graph API. When you visit the site you no longer begin with a search box. Instead you see an array of homes and neighborhoods those in your social graph and everyone who likes the same things as you, who has the same interests as you and who shares your marital status, political views and affinity for BMW and Beyonce have viewed, liked and bought.
Is that good or bad? Is it helpful, or is it a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist?
What do you think?
The widening gulf
In any case, what Facebook has done has increased the distance between how real estate listings are handled online and how people are experiencing the wider web. We are still parsing IDX regs and arguing over archaic photo rules while the web is becoming increasingly diffuse and personalized.
Inman ran a story last Friday detailing comments made by Move.com CEO Steve Berkowitz during the company’s Q1 earnings call that underscored this widening gulf. It seems the suit of Realtor blue the company has been wearing for fifteen years is getting a little snug.
Berkowitz said, in so many words, that Move was seeking greater “clarity” around the Realtor.com operating agreement (which dictates the terms under which Move operates Realtor.com for the NAR), specifically around what Move can and cannot do in the future to remain competitive. What they need to do, of course, involves creating the sort of experiences Facebook has just enabled.
Whether or not Move can get some wiggle room from the NAR will be something we’ll be watching closely because it bears directly upon how real estate is positioned to play in this new kind of web.
Power to the people
Another possibility: to the extent that Facebook can weave collective sentiment into web experiences the potential for collective action increases.
One lesser-publicized Facebook release was the community page, a new form of page that collects people who share interests. Facebook’s goal is to make these pages “the best collection of shared knowledge on a topic.”
So let’s say three hundred people gather at a “Rockridge real estate” community page or, more pointedly, something like “Noe Valley real estate pricing.” Participants share opinions, experiences and preferences in a deeply connected environment that has a history extending beyond stale sold records and thus offers something even more important: predictive power.
Where does the agent establish value here?
And think about the explosion of group buying we’re witnessing at this moment. From Gilt to Groupon, community is being fashioned into commercial leverage. Someday, I may get a Groupon headline reading “List your home with [big brand X] for half off.”
Or not. I know this is still murky. But hang with me on the larger issue: these big shifts in the way people and the web mix are going to impact real estate. Thinking strange thoughts about what that will look like is absolutely necessary.
After all, Pandora for real estate just became a lot closer to reality.
Local, Mobile, Social and the future of real estate
20 Tools to Bring your Real Estate Business to the Cloud
15 Ways to Make Your Marketing Mobile
Sounds like eharmony or match.com for homes!
As I read your blog I felt myself being taken into a live version of Tron…
As a consumer, I’m not really sure I want to be automatically told by a machine what I like, since as a woman my perogative to change my mind is inherent.
As a Realtor, I have always known that people buy homes and neighborhoods that they feel comfortable in, so in this concept it just might work.
It’s going to be a very interesting ride to be on….
Facebook has created a system that feeds all of your likes, your friends likes and your other demographic information and web interaction back to their hive.
Their intent isn’t to create a better world or a better experience for you, although that may be a side benefit.
The idea is to gather data, analyze it and sell it to the highest bidder(s). If they can use your psychographic data to create a home buyer or seller profile (i.e. “Potenital 1-2 Month Home Buyer Score is 94″) that can be sold, they will.
Likely lead buyers are larger, well funded companies that know a quality lead when they see one. Or “Hello, I’m calling from Facebook Realty with a buyer lead that scored 94. You can have it for a 35% referral fee”.
Will that help Real Estate? Probably.
Will it help you in your Real Estate practice? Probably not.
Will it help Facebook. Absolutely.
I believe these sort of developments are the things that will also eventually impact “Realtor Ratings”. One day, with all this indexing, liking, cataloguing and sharing, there will be enough information to paint a picture. Not just how many listing or sales someone generated, but also, what kind of experience was delivered.
The future is bright, dangerous and exciting.
Cheers.
I’m gonna steer clear of any “Facebook is the Evil Empire” commentary and focus on the possibilities here.
I think that Open Graph is an incredibly powerful thing, and I don’t think for a second that a “Pandora for Real Estate” application is even remotely a stretch. As you said, a month ago, who would have thought we’d have logged into Pandora, itself, and had a list of songs fully tailored to our likes? It’s pretty nifty.
While it remains to be seen how consumers would react to such technology and whether they’d “like” things or not remains to be seen. But I’ve seen how people browse for homes online. They get sucked into it for hours at a time. They put things in online “shopping carts” to save them for later viewing, so who’s to say that they wouldn’t respond to something like this? Even if it weren’t handled in a way that said to their friends, “Sally likes this house, do you?” REALTOR.com could still employ the technology, so that homes that had similar features and price points appeared at each login.
As for what Ken said, I think this will have HUGE implications when it comes to REALTOR ratings. I think friends will pay much more attention to “Sally likes Bob Realtor” than they will to which specific homes they buy.
Exciting stuff, to be sure!
[...] someone like Realtor.com make home searching a lot easier with a Facebook like button? Facebook’s Open Graph: what it (might) mean for real estate is an easier search for consumers. Imagine if you spent some time liking some houses then a 3rd [...]
The facebook “community interests” currently has a much more simple, commercial objective in mind. If you have ever been to these community pages, the information is usually cut/pasted from Wikipedia and users cannot even comment on it. But you will notice that if you put say, an NHL team as an interest, that suddenly all the banners around every page you see on Facebook will say things like “Official NHL Gear Store”. As Robert Drummer had said above, they are “collecting data and selling it to the highest bidder”, which is true because in the end the only developments made in the world are those which can be sold. Whatever you say you like on Facebook, you will shortly be seeing ads surrounding you with your “interests”, with pleasant subscript .
What this means for real estate is simple. People will be doing searches for real estate and that information is going to be available to the highest bidder. A certain real estate mobile app (Forget which one) will actually ghost whatever you look up and you get a creepy phonecall from an agent saying “Hey I heard you were looking for a home in “. The fuction of Facebook is going to work largely the same way.
In an increasingly digital world, money makes money. Functions such as these will entice large national companies, but will it help your local MLS? Unlikely. Meanwhile, Facebook becomes one of the most powerful distributers of advertising in every market of business imaginable.
Cheers