You go to a real estate website.
You click “Find an agent.”
On the “Find an agent” page, you login using your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google or Foursquare account.
You are then presented with a list of agents in the company with whom you share a connection, an interest, a shared experience, employer, hometown or other commonality.
You can see, for example, that agent Mary Jones shares your interest in antiques. She also happens to be connected to your cousin on LinkedIn.
Or that agent Mike Thomas worked for Microsoft in the 1990′s, just like you. And you’ve both been checking in at the same gym for the past few months – you just never crossed paths.
Or even that agent Angela Davis has three friends that went to college at Ohio State around the same time you were there.
These discoveries, while not necessarily conclusive in your choice of agent, do provide you with a starting point. A basis for engagement. And, hey, you may even call your cousin to see if she’s got any background on Agent Mary.
This isn’t conjecture. It’s possible right now with a new app called Peep.ly.
The social graph as catalyst for commerce
Peep.ly has been under the radar for a while. It’s now in something of a semi-private beta.
Peep.ly exposes the connections and commonalities that lie beneath the surface of the Web, deep in the social graph. It thus aids consumer decision-making, builds trust and uncovers a host of information that can serve as indicators of compatibility.
You can try it out here on the site of one of peep.ly’s beta partners. Just click on “Agent Match” in the left-hand navigation.
Rather than offering the same old marginally useful “find an agent” page, brokerage companies using peep.ly can instead match prospects to agents in a novel and meaningful way.
An individual agent can use this too. They’ll be able to create a peep.ly profile and place the app within their own site.
I like this app because it leverages the social graph to drive business connections in a way that’s both expansive and targeted. Your connections, contacts and preferences – bits of life that may spark a bite of interest – are made available to any prospect, but in a controlled one-to-one manner.
You can filter out connections, check-ins and “Likes” that may not be advantageous in a business context too.
Dispersing the “Undifferentiated Realty Mass”
Differentiation – or, for that matter, any ranking or sorting of agents – is usually anathema.
Most brokers or MLSs won’t do much more than provide keyword and alphabetical “Find and agent” functionality on their sites for fear of playing favorites or clipping some dubious area of expertise.
Media sites don’t like to categorize or rank agents too specifically for fear of limiting the ad space they can sell.
And agents themselves – too many of them – struggle to set themselves apart from what I have called the “Undifferentiated Realty Mass.”
Peep.ly cuts through all of that in a way that avoids the political crap while also being useful.
That’s remarkable.
For better or for worse, choosing a Realtor is not always a rational decision. It’s sometimes based on personal rapport. More often, it’s based on a referral from someone you know who has some sort of connection to a real estate professional.
Of course, there are tons of obvious use cases for peep.ly in other industries – and, indeed, for a general consumer audience. But the company seems intent on making peep.ly work well as a real estate app. At least for now.
I’m digging this app. What do you think?
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WOW. I guess having a little intimate Facebook or Twitter network would be a bad idea.
That’s refreshing. Finally we’re starting to see social networks based implementations, that could be used for business purposes and makes sense. Great find!
This is interesting but what happens when it fails to find any matches? This happened to me just now while trying to use LinkedIn and it seemed as if it were broken. Maybe it’s because I’m using Chrome.
Talton, it didn’t find any matches for me via Facebook either, but it found 1 match via Twitter (I’m using Chrome as well). I guess it depends on the size of your network and if it overlaps with theirs in any way.
Now THAT is awesome.
I had 3 matches to the same person
on twitter because Ernie Graham and I both follow @1000wattbrian
and a double match because we are both members of the Facebook Developers App/Group
Now would entice me to call him specifically? Probably not.
BUT, if I had a better match with another agent then I would defenitely think of reaching out.
LOVE IT
Pretty superficial matchup, I thought. Common interest was that we both held the same office in different organizations, and that we both liked to read. Wouldn’t motivate me to pick up a phone and call somebody.
I think we all would like to work with someone within our social graph because somewhere, buried in our subconscious, I think we feel that by having an association, the person will hold themselves to a higher standard or feel a sense of duty to the social connector.
Obviously to the DEPTH of the connection helps determine the comfort level of the “buyer” as well as the sense of duty from the “seller”
As everyones social graph continues to build out online over the next few years, make no mistake that tools like this will drastically affect decision making of consumers.
very well put!
I agree, Jamie. I think building personal business networks will become more and more important to real estate sales, particularly as some of our other forms of network-building fall away. Real estate personal networks in many countries are extremely important. In the absence of licensing, designations, codes of ethics, and traditional MLSs, real estate sales are based on networks. That’s why software programs like Proxio are becoming increasingly important in international real estate: they are based on building networks first. I think US real estate will eventually trend this way, but I think the software will have to be more robust than Peep.ly.
This is a great app. Useful and easy to set up. Peep.ly is on the right path. Keep it coming.
This is an awesome app, and will surely be putting it in mty business right away
thanks for sharing.
just got to make sure im implementing this stuff
Always looking for ways to connect with people and this seems to add another dimension to it. I tried it out on the sample site and one of the agents is friends with someone I went to high school with. There you go. If I was seriously looking, that might be the reason I contact them.
Thanks for the head’s up on this.
Do you think national real estate agencies will adopt this social graph-based business model? It’s tempting to think that the whole world wants to be connected, but I feel like most big ball players in the business sphere, e.g., CEOs and entreprenuers, are avoiding personal social networks due to privacy concerns, and aren’t they the best clients? They have the means to buy high-end properties… I think it’s going to be a challenge to get social graphs in place for the buyers and sellers that give real estate companies and agents the most business.
I think you make a good point Brittanie. In my opinion, I think the most important aspect of this type of web service is the ability to allow the buyer to be anonymous unless they want to make contact. This effectively allows buyers to “use” their social graph instead of others “using” their social graphs on them. This type of trust must be earned by a service that does absolutely nothing to invade their privacy (i.e. spam, wall post, etc).
On the brokerage side it seems to me that our greatest online asset, “the mls”, has been marginalized. This happened when VOWs/Portals were allowed to use our MLS data to monetize our data. The ability for a brokerage/mls/etc to leverage the social graph of its agents seems like a great way to counter balance the hit we’ve taken to our online balance sheet. Not to mention it seems unlikely that the DOJ would ever be able to “force” agents to hand over their social graphs. (unless of course you have cornered the market on friends in your neck of the woods…)
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