Homescopes - Providing Breaking Housing Market News for the SF Bay Area
Posted by Pat Kitano at 12/4/2008 2:57 PM 
Categories: social networking, New Business Models, Blog networks, Social Media
Categories: social networking, New Business Models, Blog networks, Social Media
The housing market is at a critical juncture now that the Fed/Treasury is pushing mortgage rates down to as low as 4.50% for the 30 year fixed. Consumers active in the housing market need real time, updated information to analyze the market, just as they would making other investment and stock trading decisions.
Homescopes, one of the first blog networks aggregating the blogs of individual agents in Northern California, is the first to launch a news feed providing real time local coverage of the San Francisco Bay Area housing market. The news feed widget, developed by Portalfuze, automatically delivers breaking news from a variety of sources: Homescopes' bloggers, related real estate news mainstream media sources and soon, new listings from IDX feeds and foreclosure databases. In addition, Homescopes' agents will add their real time interpretations on the market via micro-blogging services like Twitter and Friendfeed, and bookmarking services like Delicious, Diigo and Dwellicious.
Homescopes' news feed works because ten agents are automatically distributing their news updates and blog content through the site. Homescopes is expanding across Northern California and adding new agents. It's a perfect avenue for distributing your content (but you do need to know the Social Broadcasting System) Contact Marian Bennett (650) 712-2460 / mb (at) MarianSBennett.com / Twitter for details.
The New Brokerage Website that's not based on a Brokerage
Homescopes is the first of many regional/local real estate newsfeed social networks under development. Our company, Domus Consulting Group, is developing these networks through our web conferenced Social Media Marketing Workshops. We're starting our next series on Friday, December 5 @ 10:30 running over 12 weeks. Jeff Dowler, Jason Crouch and our participants have written about our Workshops. If you're interested in starting or participating in a real estate newsfeed network, please register for our Workshops or contact me.
The New Brokerage Website that is based on an Actual Brokerage
We're also working with a number of brokerages nationwide to implement the newsfeed System (it's free, really!), and coaching their agents on how to use the System through our Workshops above. Agents like the System because it doesn't require blogging and gets real time online traffic. Here are some past articles that describe the Social Broadcasting System:
Real estate brokerage sites and broadcast media
The social media system
How micro-blogging will affect blogging
The new broadcasting real estate website (slideshow)
The new broadcasting brokerage website (text version)
Creating the conversational web (slideshow)
The Social Broadcasting System ( a kind of white paper)
Update: Fidelity Investments has added news feeds to serve their customer base. More about breaking news websites at sister site Media Transparent.
Pat,
Congratulations this is a stellar moment in the development of blog networks with homescopes.
The critical piece to your description truly is the delivery of information now. The freshest breaking news should not be reserved for certain commodities.
I look forward to evangelizing this service, your workshops, and the message you support in the continuing education of the real estate industry
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Hi Pat. I agree the trend is toward the aggregation of news. I am currently working on a project along these lines. You might find this post on a recent AP news study of interest.
http://tinyurl.com/6o434y
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I really believe that this rate drop to 4.5% combined with the huge drop in prices should provide a bottom for the market. I'm glad the fed is still working to prevent a further meltdown in 2009.
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