Redfin Recreating Curbed for the Northwest
I’m not sure how I missed this, but it might have something to do with all the Nyquil.
Steve Jagger at Ubertor Real Estate Blog points out that Redfin is looking to hire real estate bloggers. (Thanks to Greg for pointing this out)
The goal is to create an insanely addictive blog about everything that moves in Seattle real estate. We’re hiring for neighborhoods all over Seattle, from Tacoma to Issaquah to Bainbridge Island. For your neighborhood, Redfin would send you all sorts of data on fixer-uppers, price reductions, properties that have been long on the market, new construction notices. Your job would be to tour new open houses, snap a few pics, and write up a review.
I think this is a good idea. Curbed has certainly proved there is a demand for hyperlocal neighborhood information and as a pure branding move, putting Redfin on the masthead certainly makes sense. Focusing on neighborhoods and listings makes it more consumer friendly and differentiates it from the more entrenched local blogs like RainCityGuide.
I’ll be interested to see how they roll out this new blog; whether it will be Redfin specific initiative (i.e. on their site) or if it will firewalled apart from their regular business and independently marketed simply with Redfin as a lead ’sponsor’, much like Vespa USA did with its Vespa blogs. Personally, I favor the latter option – mainly it will give the fledgling blog/bloggers some autonomy to create their own voice and brand.
And heck, who knows, it could even become a second revenue stream for the company.
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3 Comment(s)
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- From Seattle real estate listings | Nov 30, 2006
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- From Real Estate Blog - Redfin Hiring Bloggers | Jan 3, 2007
Greg Swann | Nov 29, 2006 | Reply
Hmmm… Any chance you’re seeing more than is there? When Stephen Jagger sent that ad to me, I read it as meaning that RedFin wanted a cheap way to get on-line property previews without incuring procuring cause problems. IOW, a virtual catalog of listings.
Joel Burslem | Nov 29, 2006 | Reply
Well, the post title was meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek Greg.
And I think your take is definitely possible, if not probable. My point was simply, questioning how they intend on branding the new blog, if it they mean it to be a brand new entity or part of their existing site.
I kinda think they might be better off having this as a separate entity – for some of the reasons I mentioned above.
Greg Swann | Nov 29, 2006 | Reply
> Well, the post title was meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek Greg.
Ah! I read more than was there. My apologies.
Actually, it might be cool to have tightly neighborhood-specific weblogs, like a cellular blog. Each one could feature its own content and side-blog syndicate nearby “cells”. A comprehensive view would be difficult to obtain — maybe hand-edited aggregator blogs — but if there really is a hyper-local interest, then getting down to the level of a closely-shared-identity might work.