Dwellicious Tackles Search Site Overload
Dwellicious is a social bookmarking site geared exclusively towards real estate. In the mold of Digg and its namesake Delicious, it’s a pretty simple idea… Save all your properties from all over the web to one location and share them with others, including the agent you’re working with.
The company launched at Real Estate Connect in New York where I had a chance to speak with founder Greg Robertson about why he decided to create the service (see Saving Properties One Click at a Time).
I like the site a lot, having had the opportunity to really use it over the last couple of weeks. First, compliments on the UI and design. The site looks great and is very usable and snappy. Adding homes was a breeze. Like the 1000Watt guys I loved having a “Meta Bucket”.
But the magic for me was ultimately not in the ability to sort and save properties I was looking at, but rather all the additional information Dwellicious is able to wrap around the homes themselves.
Click on the Cool Tools button on any saved property to see what I’m talking about. Try for yourself on some of the sample properties I’ve saved in my bookmarks on Dwellicious.
Important contextual data points like Walk Score and neighborhood amenities are revealed (see Lifestyle search is the new black) — information that is many times lacking on the originating listing source.
This feature, while its greatest strength, is also its greatest weakness however.
Since Dwellicious has grown in response to the patchwork of competing national search experiences, the need for a big bucket is largely rendered moot if there is a local broker’s IDX-driven web site or MLS web site (see MRIS Takes on the Search Sites) that that has half a clue about delivering a great search experience. Redfin is a good example. Using Redfin’s site to search for homes in any of its service areas and I get 100% of the local listings and a fantastic, deep feature set that approximates most of what Dwellicious has to offer.
There’s no need to go anywhere else.
The good news (for Dwellicious anyway), is that those sites who actually have a clue are few and far between.
Finally, I also fear Dwellicious may be a tad advanced for the average Internet user, since the entire premise is predicated on the use of a Bookmarklet in your browser bar. That seems to me to be the service’s Achilles heel. A simple idea on the surface, but a lot harder to get people to use in practice.
I hope then that Dwellicious attempts to work with the search sites to integrate links or icons into the listing pages themselves. If they can do this, it will bypass the need for a Bookmarklet and greatly speed up adoption rates.
Dwellicious expects to monetize the service by charging agents and brokers for a Dwellicious Pro account in which they can sign up every buyer they are working for and be able to collaborate with and review all their search activity.
If it fits your buyers’ behavior – it may be worth taking a look.
James Shiner | Jan 26, 2009 | Reply
I agree, Dwellicious is a great concept. I do see adoption by the major search sites as a problem however since their goal is to 1) Have every listing on their own sites and 2) Keep eyeballs on their sites. Most search sites have a “save to favorites” type function that keeps users on the site and entices them to create an account.
I would love to see the Dwellicious icon/link added to all the major search sites and hope that they can do it.
ZIPVO has been added to the list of sites Dwellicious indexes and will be adding the icon soon.
Greg Robertson | Jan 26, 2009 | Reply
Thanks for the post Joel. Good insights. Currently the Dwellicious “chiclet” has been implemented on the HAR.COM MLS website and we are going to be announcing more soon.
P.S.
My wife tells me that if you close your eyes while you watch the video of me, you might actually understand what I’m saying instead of watching by “bobble head”! ; )
Alex Wang | Jan 27, 2009 | Reply
Great post about Dwellicious, I think it’s an awesome tool and we’ve been using it for my tech-savvy clients here in Silicon Valley. Your post as motivated me to share this with my readers as well. Thanks Joel.
Rob Hahn | Jan 27, 2009 | Reply
Joel -
What do you think of Dwellicious as a software provider, instead of a Delicious clone?
Meaning, if dwellicious can figure out a way to add its social bookmarking functionality to existing IDX sites who have a clue… wouldn’t that be of value to those sites?
-rsh
Patrick Healy | Jan 27, 2009 | Reply
Great post Joel. I had been playing with this when it was in development but was having a hard time figuring out what the business model was. Now that it’s live it is very clear. There are even some other ideas that I had that could be good for Greg – if you are interested, call me
– that could generate better user data and revenues.
One thing that I am interested in figuring out is how does Dwellicious deal with removed/re-listed properties? I can’t seem to find anything on that.
I don’t see the bookmarklet as being so much of s stumbling block. I think that people who get it will get it. If you can set up a user account you can use a bookmarklet. I also don’t think that other sites will be lining up to build in Dwellicious functionality to have them capture their content
One feature I think would be really really helpful would be the end user’s ability to manually geocode the property in question. For example I have been playing with Dwellicious and although there were several listings I saved, many were not able to be geocoded hence unable to populate any of the information in many of the “cool tools”. If an end user is able to pick a point on a map for the system to work off of it will drastically minimize the incidence of things like this.
Joel Burslem | Jan 27, 2009 | Reply
@Rob Hahn
I think you may be on to something – if Dwellicious can build out a software solution (i.e. widget) that IDX sites could easily embed in their listing pages, they’d definitely be on to something.
To me the bookmarking aspect is not as important as how Dwellicious is able to wrap additional data around the listings themselves.
I wrote about the need to reinvigorate listing pages back in 2007. Dwellicious could step up and provide much of this.
http://www.futureofrealestatemarketing.com/building-a-new-real-estate-home-page
victor lund | Jan 27, 2009 | Reply
Hurray!
People are finally beginning to understand
When WAV Group suggested that Dwellicious was one of the most exciting products launched at NAR in Orlando – everyone looked at us sideways.
It is a brilliant concept and there are a number of features and/or products that can be spun out with widespread adoption.
Go get ‘em Greg!
Laguna Niguel Real Estate | Jan 28, 2009 | Reply
The good thing is that- Dwellicious has everything: A cool design, great functionality and all-in-all decent user participation.
Greg Robertson | Jan 28, 2009 | Reply
I was talking with Marc Davison of 1000Watt Consulting last night about integrating the Dwellicious functionality into broker websites, kind of a Dwellicious Enterprise version. Dan, my partner, already had a similar idea for a white label version of Dwellicious for broker websites.
Marc says now when you register at a broker site it’s nothing more than a lead for the broker and a pretty lame set of tools, such as property email alerts or an option to be put on a drip email campaign. Email yuck!
Our goal with Dwellicious Enterprise would be to have a branded Dwellicious site/tool for broker websites to plug in. So even if the consumer goes to other real estate sites(which they do), they save their bookmarked listings back at the originating broker website.
Now the broker has the consumer search data and could monitor the consumers search process from a dashboard, similar to Dwellicious Pro.
We are currently looking for a few brokers to try this concept. Check out Dan’s post at our company blog at http//blog.woolleyrobertson.com
Laguna Niguel Real Estate | Jan 28, 2009 | Reply
@ Greg
Seems like a cool concept. You’re a concept factory