Joel Burslem The Future of Real Estate Marketing cites ShackYack.com, but I don’t think we’re seeing the same thing. What he sees is another manifestation of what he calls Real Estate 2.0. What I’m seeing is a particularly user-friendly interface to an IDX system. In other words, this is not the disintermediation of a brick ‘n’ mortar broker, this is a competitive advantage built by one broker to use against all the others. It’s not perfect, mind you. If the buyer has no idea where they want to live — a relocating family, for instance — this tool won’t be of much help. But still, it’s very cool.
But the other end of this is that I’m thinking maybe Joel sees this as a very complicated application, whereas it seems to me to be just an integration of an IDX-like database with the Google Maps API. The beauty of the tool is in the user interface, but that’s really just a Cascading Style Sheets job.
In other words, a young and money-hungry web programmer could probably reverse-engineer this in no time, if the price was right…
Joel Burslem says:
Hi Greg,
Just to clarify, I define Real Estate 2.0 as any combination of real estate data and ‘Web 2.0’ features (mashups, social features, RSS, Ajax etc. etc.).
Whether this is done by a existing broker, or a new entrant to the marketplace, I don’t generally differentiate.
I realize that what ShackYack has done is not technically complicated, but what won me over was its clean, simple design and a fresh, different approach to its UI.
July 11, 2006 — 8:26 am
Greg Swann says:
Okay. Sorry for any misunderstanding. I think the work you’re doing is remarkable, absolutely essential. We had a request to participate in a survey from RABAC, the Realtor organization behind the Accredited Buyer’s Rep designation. The topic of the survey? Whether we would be interested in buying REBAC-branded promotional items–pens, shirts, jackets, folders. The Future of Real Estate Marketing is the only antidote I know of to the REBAC-branded deck-chair-on-the-Titanic.
July 11, 2006 — 8:35 am