Foursquare just surpassed the 10 million user mark. Facebook Places has become extremely popular quickly. Whether you “get” it or not people like checking in. A lot.

Quora has recently exploded onto the scene as a new breed of Q and A site with a social and transparent approach. People go to the web with questions, Quora has answers, from real people.

What if you wanted to ask a Quora type question to someone who is checked in at a specific location RIGHT NOW?

Possibilities abound.

Thinking of going to the DMV and want to know how long the wait is? Heading to Applebee’s on a Friday night but don’t want to even think about stopping by if the wait is over an hour? Have a plane to catch and wondering how traffic will be along your path?

Localmind has created an app for that. There is an iPhone/iPad version as well as a web app [iPad version is AMAZING]. By accessing the location based data available via check in sites like Foursquare and Facebook, Localmind can actually connect you with people who are currently at a venue so that you can ask them a question in the moment. Questions can also be left at locations and will be pushed to the next patron to check in where the question is waiting. The video below gives a great visual explanation of the practical uses of Localmind in under 40 seconds. The quote below is by Localmind’s co-founder and upcoming Inman Connect San Francisco speaker Lenny Rachitsky:

Anytime I come across a new technology like this I immediately try to wrap my mind around the possibilites within the real estate space. Shiny object or viable platform moving forward?

My first thought is that the early adopters in the real estate industry on Foursquare/Gowalla/Facebook Places may see some reward here. Being checked in all over town is great, but many would argue that just isn’t enough to generate legitimate business. Especially in a relationship business like real estate.

Where Localmind can be of additional value to the already geo location savvy is that it REALLY encourages engagement with strangers (some would call those leads/prospects/etc). By asking and answering questions you are not only interacting with potential new clients and being helpful, you are also doing it in the moment they need it most while at the same time sharing your local expertise. There are a lot of unanswered questions on the map in Localmind right now in most metro markets.

I can see some genuine connections being made through Localmind and I know that I for one would be much more inclined to want to be connected on the social graph with those that bring value versus those who simply shout about where they are all the time.

A Foursquare check in is talking, Localmind shows that you are listening.

Seems to me that the listeners are winning at the social media game right now, even though most folks are just blabbing away.

Would love your thoughts on Localmind below and the possible uses for the real estate industry.

Written by: Chris Smith, Chief Evangelist, Inman News, @chris_smth

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It is simply impossible to avoid. Buyers remorse seems to be ever more cruel when it comes to technology.

Picture this. You have made up your mind that it is finally time to buy a new camera/phone/laptop. You are done photographing your listings with your 5 megapixel point and shoot. Fed up with taking the battery out of your Blackberry four times a day? Once and for all you are going to get rid of that spam and virus filled PC you have been chugging along with for many too many months.

Often when we buy new hardware it is an emotional and rash decision. It shouldn’t be. Yes, you may be ready for that new tool for your business, but what if the newest, hottest, shiniest model is coming out in two weeks? A model that will surely be smaller and faster and maybe even worst of all cheaper?

Enter Decide.com.

Decide.com has created an algorithm based on 1′000’s of data points to make sure that you not so much buy the right device, but more so that you buy it at the right time!

As someone who has purchased far too many Apple products in the last 3 years I can tell you that having a service and information like this can literally be priceless.

Upgrades are happening so quickly with hardware as are price reductions on older models. Normally you would never see in a Best Buy ad “Great model, but you should wait four weeks until we mark it down or for the new one to come out”.

Decide.com even has a great mobile site so that you can access suggestions like “wait for new model” or “wait for price to drop” while at the store. Talk about transparency and giving the sales guy a truly difficult objection to overcome.

From what I can tell Decide is currently focused on cameras and laptops, both of which many real estate agents are either in the market for or will be soon. If you decide, pun intended, to browse around Decide.com and happen to find an item that should not be purchased due to the data they have complied you can set alerts as to be notified when the time is right.

My first reaction? Super cool site worth spending a few minutes on and remembering for your next purchase.

My second is that what if a site like Trulia or Zillow decided to add a similar algorithm to homes consumers were browsing on the web? Can you picture a buyer standing in front of a home with their phone out getting a “Wait 3 months to buy” recommendation? I can…

Written by: Chris Smith, Chief Evangelist, Inman News,@chris_smth

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Have you been Zapd yet?

One of my favorite new apps is one that allows you to create a completely mobile optimized website from your iPhone in literally seconds.

Zapd (a new service from Seattle-based Pressplane) is a free app and is available from the Apple App store. Snap some photos, pick a theme, add a little text and then voila! Your site is done. Zapd reminds me a lot of Posterous and Tumblr, but the biggest difference is that you can create the entire site from your iPhone. Once a site is published you can share it directly to Twitter or Facebook or via email. Every website created with Zapd is optimized for smartphones and tablets.

I’ve been chatting with Pressplane CEO and founder Kelly Smith for a few weeks now about this new application and personally, I think Zapd is an awesome application for real estate agents.

Here are some ideas on how to use real estate agents could use Zapd:

1. Property websites
2. Neighborhood websites (photos of types of homes, schools, parks, restaurants)
3. Buyers tour (i.e. “10 great homes to check out” – great if you are previewing a number of homes for a client)
4. Landscaping ideas
5. Home improvement ideas
6. Before and After (for staging)
7. Educational events and conferences (a quick and easy way to share photos)

Here are some examples of real estate professionals and Zapd sites they have created on the fly:

• 28490 Florence, Garden City, MI
• Real Estate with Allisa D. Young
• Park Avenue Properties

Here is a video from Zapd that explains how quick and easy it is to use:

What do you think? Have you used Zapd yet? I’d love your feedback, leave me a comment below!

Katie Lance, Social Media Director, Inman News, @katielance

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I have a fondness for my iPhone. I know many of you feel the same. Waking up and checking Twitter, email and the like with one eye open is typically the way I start my day. Sometimes I feel like I am the only one, but the data we are seeing coming from the mobile space tells us otherwise. It actually tells us that there has never been a more rapid technology platform shift, ever.

So if I love my phone and you love your phone we need to concede that there is a decent chance that today’s tech savvy buyers and sellers love their phones as well! Do you have a mobile marketing strategy? Have you started using text message or QR Code options on your marketing pieces? Is your site mobile optimized? All questions for another day. Today we start with something simple to execute and sure to impress.

Uscapeit wants to become the Google “street view” for the masses. They have created a must download iPhone only app (for now). Their inspiration seems to have come from Google. For those of you that are not aware Google actually sent cars up and down every street in the U.S. and took 360 degree images that they layered into their mapping systems. Uscapeit wants you to be able to do the same from anywhere, anytime including of course a home you are trying to market!

The process of creating what they refer to as a “Scape” is very simple. You hold your phone and spin around in a circle as to capture the entire 360 degrees from where you are standing. There are a number of cool photo apps that accomplish this element already like 360 Panorama for the iPhone and Photaf for the Android. Where Uscapeit takes the technology one step further is that they allow you to stitch together the Scapes you have created into a collection and they then add Googleesque arrows between each one as to allow the end viewer to walk around the collection of images you have gathered.

You could start with a Scape of the front of the home, then lead into the foyer for another, the living room, master bedroom, kitchen, etc… Many of you may remember the virtual tours of the early 2000’s on websites that would allow the web visitor on your site to control a camera in any given room and pan/zoom fluidly. This is a very similar concept but instead of being very pricey it is FREE and instead of being on the “regular” web it is mobile optimized which is where all of the eyeballs are rapidly shifting. No need to call a company and pay big bucks, just head over to the iTunes store, download Uscapeit and start creating great Scapes. Once the Scapes have been created there is one button share functionality with Facebook and email which makes getting them out to your sphere of influence a breeze.

Overall I am very impressed with the Uscapeit app as it relates to a potential marketing tool for Realtors. They have several demo Scapes that you can check out inside the app including one of an apartment for rent which I feel really gives a good demonstration of the potential power of the app for real estate purposes.

Any questions feel free to leave those below. One that I anticipate is “How about something like this for the Android?” Let’s have some fun with that one and I will ask any Android users who find a comparable app to leave a link in the comments below.

Written by: Chris Smith, Chief Evangelist, Inman News, @chris_smth

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Just yesterday, I received in my inbox a very exciting email from the folks at 1000 Watt Consulting announcing that for the first time, they are debuting their own app! The app is called How’s the Market.

According to the email,

“The goal for How’s the Market is to help agents get their street-level market knowledge out to prospects and clients easily, clearly and elegantly.”

Put more simply, it’s going to help real estate professionals quickly answer the question “How’s the market?”

As a Realtor, don’t you get asked that all the time? I know I do! As soon as I mention I work with in the real estate industry, it’s the first things people want to know about.

Brian Boero, co-founder of 1000 Watt Consulting posted this on the 1000 Watt blog:

“Street-level real estate knowledge is irreplaceable. No matter how many charts and graphs you can get online, there’s nothing more valuable than a well-informed opinion from a professional with experience in your neighborhood or on your street….If you give people what you know they want how they want it… well, that’s not just good marketing – it’s also great branding.”

I spoke to Joel Burslem from 1000 Watt (and founder of FOREM) who said this:

“The app is really designed to solve two problems. One, consumers really want what only Realtors know. Second, Realtors don’t have an easy way to share their knowledge. How’s the Market aims to fix this disconnect.”

1000 Watt says it’s goal is to launch the app by early summer. The app is being built as a web app for launch – HTML5 – so it will be available cross platform and on mobile devices. They anticipate building native iOS (iOS, iPad) and Android versions shortly thereafter, depending on demand.

For a limited time, they are accepting names into the wait list for their Beta.

Joel emphasized to me that the Beta is only open for a limited time, so sign up as soon as poosible! You can sign up on their web page www.howsthemarket.com. Since the launch yesterday, 1000 Watt has received hundreds of requests to be a part of their Beta. I already signed up and am looking forward to seeing this first app from this very talented team.

What do you think? Did you sign up? I love your feedback, leave me a comment below!

Written by: Katie Lance, Social Media Director, Inman News, @katielance

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Note: I received this press release this week and thought it was interesting technology to share with our FOREM readers. I’d love your thoughts on this app if you’ve used it – please leave me a comment below. – Katie

OKLAHOMA CITY –  a la mode, a leader in real estate technology, today released its popular DaVinci appraisal app in the Android Market.

The free labs release of DaVinci for Android follows in the footsteps of a long line of time-saving data gathering and sketching products in the DaVinci family, including DaVinci for iPad, DaVinci for iPhone, DaVinci for Desktop and DaVinci for Tablet PC.

“DaVinci has really made a splash on iOS devices, reaching more than 100,000 users this month, and we wanted to give more appraisers the opportunity to easily gather data in the field,” said Product Manager Dale Spoonemore. “Since releasing DaVinci for iPad a year ago, we’ve received a ton of requests from appraisers using Android devices, so we’ve designed a version of DaVinci that uses some of Android’s more popular features like talk-to-type text input.”

Like others in the DaVinci family, DaVinci for Android was born from a la mode labs – a research and development environment designed for collaboration on new applications.  By releasing new technology through the labs, a la mode gives appraisers a chance to try its newest releases and provide feedback on tools which are critical to their business.

DaVinci for Android works on any Smartphone or tablet device running Android 2.1 or later.  Like its mobile predecessors, DaVinci for Android offers appraisers all the fields they need to gather property data on site, create QuickLists that speed data entry by eliminating repetitive retyping, take voice and text notes, and add photos.

“DaVinci for Android speeds up appraisers’ turn times on home inspections. They can fill out an entire 1004 form by simply tapping on the screen,” Spoonemore said. “And, we’ll save them even more time when we release the sketcher in an update later this year.”

DaVinci for Android can now be downloaded in the Android Market. For more information, visit www.alamode.com/Labs/projects/DaVinciForAndroid.

Posted by: Katie Lance, Social Media Director, Inman News, @katielance

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Mobile technology is changing the face of real estate. It has changed the way real estate professionals communicate and how they market themselves. A whole new generation is being brought up with the entire world wide web in the palm of their hand. If you’ve been in real estate long enough you have seen many cultural and technological shifts happen – the MLS book, the rise of the internet and agent websites, blogs, social media and now mobile technology.

We are texting, tweeting, leaving status updates, and communicating with our friends and family (a.k.a. our “sphere”) more than any other time in history

Do you have a mobile technology marketing plan? Do you know where to start? If you are like most agents, you are busy running the day to day needs of your business – closing deals, calling potential clients, showing property, and marketing your listings that usually the mobile technology plan gets pushed to the bottom of the list.

The great news is that even if you don’t have a mobile strategy in place today – there are so many quick and easy things you can do to get moving in the right direction.

Chris Smith, Chief Evangelist for Inman News, is one of the leaders in real estate mobile technology. Chris is one of our featured speakers on the Inman News Agent Reboot tour and you can catch Chris Wednesday, June 29th in Denver, Colorado. Chris’ topic: “15 Mobile Tools That Will Make You Stand Out” in an incredible learning experience. In rapid-fire style, Chris details some of the hottest and most effective apps that real estate agents can being using everyday to generate more leads and help them work smarter and faster.

One of the fifteen tools Chris talks about is HootSuite – this is one of my all-time favorite mobile apps. In my opinion, it is the predominant leader in social media management. It makes managing social media on multiple platforms s breeze. With HootSuite you can easily post to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and schedule your tweets out for different days and times.There are so many cool new features to HootSuite that Chris talks about in his message.

Here is a sneak peak of that presentation:

Please join us in Denver, CO for Agent Reboot!  Register online and pay only $49 (onsite is $99) and that includes a complimentary continental breakfast!

View the complete program here >>

See you in Denver!

P.S. I’d love to get your feedback about mobile technology and how you are using it in your business – leave me your comments below!

Written by: Katie Lance, Social Media Director, Inman News, @katielance

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I wrote a blog post yesterday about some great apps to download before you go to a conference, but I just discovered a very cool app that is available for download on the iPhone or Android – Hashable!

This app makes it super easy to exchange contact info with someone you meet at a conference, meeting, or networking event. You simply plug in their Twitter handle and your contact info is instantly shared. The other cool thing is that you can see who your Twitter followers are meeting in person – another great networking opportunity!

Here is a quick video explaining how their app works (click here to view):

I love the simplicity of this app and how easy it makes sharing info – let’s face it, dealing with business cards and exchanging contact info at an event can sometimes be a pain! How many times have you lost cards or accidently given someone elses card out? C’mon, we’ve all done it!

I’d love to get your opinion on this app – leave me your feedback below. And if you are going to Agent Reboot Phoenix tomorrow (Wed. 3/16) you should download it and try it out!

Written by: Katie Lance, Senior Marketing Manager, Inman News, @katielance

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Many people are calling March in real estate tech world as “March Madness!” How do you make the most of your time at a conference? What are some apps to make the experience even better?

Here are 7 of my favorite apps for real estate conferences or events:

1. AudioBoo – Create an audio recording up to 5 minutes in length – this is fantastic for  audio blogging, interviewing a speaker or just audio recording a few key notes you don’t want to forget!
2. Lanyrd – Ever wonder when the next big conference is? Lanyrd is a directory of conferences, events and speakers. Visitors can sign in with Twitter to see events their friends are attending or speaking at, submit new events, add talks that they have given and build up their speaker profile. The site also indexes videos, slide decks, audio clips and write-ups of talks given at previous events.
3. Foursquare – Definitely a must-have app for a conference. Check in at the location but also the name of the event i.e. “Agent Reboot Phoenix”. Upload photos, share tips, see who has already arrived and have the ability to set up a few lunch meetings!
4. Urbanspoon – At a conference you are always looking for a great local restaurant. Urbanspoon is one of my favorite apps to use in a city I am unfamiliar with – see reviews, maps, ratings, cost, and more.
5. HootSuite – I am a huge fan of HootSuite. I love being able to save the hashtag of the event so I can easily check out what people are talking about and then retweet and get engaged in what people are talking about. I also love the ability to schedule  my tweets – I may choose to not fire off 10 tweets in a row but schedule them out 5 minutes at a time to not annoy anyone! I love of people really like TweetDeck as well – just a personal preference – but one of these is definitely a must-have!
6. Facebook – Definitely a “given” app to have on your phone, but at a conference, you can use it to easily upload photos, videos and comments right from your photo to the conference Facebook page. Make sure you save the conference page (i.e. facebook.com/agentreboot) as a “favorite” on your phone so you can get to it right away!
7. CardMunch – I just discovered this tonight via Reggie Nicolay – but this is a really awesome app! Take a picture of business cards received and they automatically sync to your iPhone contacts. How cool is that?!

What are your favorite apps? Leave me a comment below so I can add it to my arsenal!

Written by: Katie Lance, Senior Marketing Manager, Inman News, @katielance

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Guest blog post by Matthew Shadbolt, Director of Interactive Product & Marketing, The Corcoran Group, New York

Some thoughts on mobile marketing for real estate…

Many of us, over the past few years, have transitioned much of our advertising and marketing from print to online. Many of us still have not. I’d argue that most of us have not. But as that transition continues to take place, there’s another one going on simultaneously, that of a massive shift in web use from the desktop to the mobile device. Whereas advertisers used to upsell online with print buys, today they are doing the same with mobile as part of online buys. It’s a fascinating thing to watch.

When we say ‘being online’, it no longer just means clicking away at the big screen attached to the whirring box on your desk that’s plugged into the wall.

It means finding things near you, sharing where you are with your friends, video chat from the grocery store (“is this the one I should get?”) and so much more, but what’s common amongst all those use cases is that increasingly our use of the web is being informed by our location. Who better to capitalize on this trend than the real estate industry?

Last week, Corcoran launched an update to its popular iPhone app which allows you to search for homes in and around New York. One of the key differences in this app is the wealth of information that’s populated outside of the actual listing information. Corcoran calls this ‘going beyond the four walls’, and the concept is baked deep into its brand premise. It means sharing things to do nearby, places to go, restaurants to try, things to do at night – a better sense of what it’s really like there – can you get this from a shot of the outside of the property? Or the kitchen? Last week’s update added the ability for the user to now see local news for real estate, shopping and restaurant stories near properties, powered by Curbed, Eater , and Racked – 3 very popular blogs here in Manhattan.

You can read more about the project here on Corcoran’s Facebook page.

One of the main benefits that the phone brings to real estate searches is that it pushes the idea of contextual content around search. It begins to answer the question, ‘what is it really like to live there?’, and by providing a detailed, hyperlocal and comprehensive set of information, that has nothing to do with the specifics of the property but everything to do with living in a neighborhood, Corcoran’s app attempts to achieve this. Think about how this works versus how most online sites allow you to search for homes – it’s very poor in comparison. First, you usually have to ‘fill out’ a search page that consists of drop downs, checkboxes, perhaps even something as vague as a simple text entry box, then hit the all important ‘GO’ button. In mobile it can be automatic and simply ‘near me now’.

What gets returned, I believe, is not how people search for homes. Real estate search results usually consist of 2 things – pages and pages of list-based, thumbnail driven content, which forces the user to wade through the results in an unfocused way – this is the Google model of helping people find things, and that model is under some serious review this year. The second way is to plot those same results on a map. There’s been much talk recently about the effectiveness of map-based searches, and while they do provide some minor level of context in terms of ‘it’s near that road’, it still doesn’t answer the question, ‘what is it like to live there?’

The home buying process is at its core, an emotional one. Time and again, we hear our clients say “I bought with my heart, not my head”, or “I just knew as soon as I walked through the front door”. I’m not arguing that it isn’t a big financial consideration as well (of course it is) but do checkboxes and drop downs, or hundreds of properties plotted on a map, match what these people are telling us? Or is something like “here’s the latest news in the immediate neighborhood, combined with some great places to eat, some things to do, and a sense of what happens here at night” around each and every step of the process, a more person-centric way of doing it?

Of course, for the larger real estate portals, providing this curated, local and insightful information around every listing is a very difficult challenge to do at scale, and I fully accept that we are very spoiled for content here in Manhattan. But, the idea of ‘freeing’ real estate search from the desktop model, and putting it into people’s hands in a geographically specific way, which puts THEM in the middle of the map, I’d argue is a more effective and fun way of finding a home. Pair this idea with the filter of your network (perhaps through social media), and the Google model of search starts to evaporate rapidly. Being able to find homes based on your interests, hobbies, and goals, through the filter of your friends, is a very different experience from the ‘Enter your price range’ criteria so heavily used online, and mirrors that of how people truly find homes offline.

The best online experiences are the ones that most closely mirror offline ones. Facebook is great at keeping me in touch with my friends. Amazon allows me to get exactly what I’m looking for without wading through the shelves at the mall. These platforms solve problems. Who does the same thing in real estate? The first thing an agent does when they meet a customer is get to know them, not ask them the precise specifics of what they are looking for and dump hundreds of ‘results’ upon them. They curate the homes they show based on a thorough understanding of their client, combined with their expertise. Where is that concept online?

I argue that the mobile device will be the platform that solves this question for the real estate industry, simply because it has the ability to contextualize not only ‘results’, but what the customer is interested in, in a vastly better way than the desktop. We’re living in incredibly exciting times for our industry – some are embracing the changes and figuring out what needs to happen. Most are not. I call on you to spread the word.

To find out more about Corcoran’s app for real estate, visit www.corcoran.com/iphone or www.corcoran.com/android

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