Widget Driven Facebook Wows All
Tech pundits were nonplussed by Mark Zuckenberg's rejection of Yahoo's $1 billion offer for Facebook. Just two days ago, Mediapost suggests Has Facebook's Ship Already Sailed?.
Yesterday in San Francisco, Mark got to swagger... he unveiled Facebook's F8, the first truly widget-driven Web 2.0 platform for a social network. Widget applications make a Facebook account look like a highly personalized blog. Mashable lists 30 widgets that run the gamut of personalized movie and music reviews to e-commerce affiliate recommendations to make some petty cash.
Facebook scores a real coup by involving the developer community in producing these widgets. Frankly, it behooves the widget producers - Forbes.com and Washington Post among them - to do so... the widget on a Facebook site is advertisement, or even a revenue generator.
Yes it's one more social network to join, but I now recommend all real estate professionals to get a Facebook account because your consumer clients (23 million and growing) are there, and Facebook will enable you to develop a site (unlike MySpace) that markets your real estate expertise using... housing widgets. Going further, the real estate pro can add music, pictures and other entertaining widgets to the site to round out the whole character.
Last week, Trulia unveiled Housing Widgets, a user-generated directory of widgets related to the real estate markets. The best ones should be developed for the F8 platform so the new Facebook real estate community can use them. Here are a few more widget ideas:
- Weekend open house map
- Real estate fantasy trading game
- Trulia Voices Q&A - questions get asked within Facebook's geographical networks
Technorati Tags: Facebook, F8, Mark Zuckenberg, widgets, housing widgets, trulia
Real Estate Fantasy Trading Card Game?
Tell me more!
(And no I'm not trying to be funny)
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Funny how I'm getting inquiries on this... no working prototype yet, but I see it coming as a game-like product that will build community
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You got that right, buddy! Social networks are very important right now, especially businesses like real estate. More power to you! Mabuhay!
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There are many Realtors upset about Trulia widgets. Each widget contains links back to Trulia. If a competing Realtor placed a widget on their site, they are simply telling Google that Trulia is the authority for real estate in their city in the way of the widget with the anchor text, "Your City" Real Estate! I believe this strategy will back fire on Trulia given Realtors will be their primary source of future income (once they start charging us for our MLS data). Boycott Trulia Today!
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