I’m fascinated with data and how it can be harnessed and used online. I’m continually amazed at how people take seemingly mundane data and create a useful service out of it. A great example of this is PlanningAlerts.com – a site I found via a post on Springwise (which is a great blog in its own right).

“The UK startup functions as a targeted search engine, digitally scouring local government agencies’ online records for news of construction projects destined to affect the lives of local residents. Residents can sign up, enter a postal code and receive alerts by email. Result: if there’s a public meeting scheduled to discuss zoning changes in a nearby subdivision, users receive word of the meeting’s time and place.”

This is an excellent example of using hyperlocal data that truly adds value to people’s lives. Personally, I’d like to see this type of service in the US.

PlanningAlerts also teaches us something about data gathering and its importance to web applications. As we’ve seen, those who own the data are the ones in control (think NAVTEQ, Amazon, Fidelity, First American, MLS etc). They make their data available for a price, for which third party web application developers are happy to pay – since it’s the only way to get in the game short of spending exorbitant amounts of money to gather your own set of data.

The data that PlanningAlerts gathers is mostly public, but it’s still painful to find the public websites and then suck the right data off of it. An example of this in the US would be the public property records data that companies like First American and Fidelity gather on homes around the country. It is excruciatingly painful to get, it comes in all formats, and takes an army of employees to parse and make useful.

Lastly, we talk a lot about all the eye-candy and “real estate porn” available online these days. Those sites came from people like me, trying to come up with useful ways to use data put into a way that the public can use daily. However, as web application developers, we sometimes get tunnel vision and don’t think of what the local real estate professional or general consumer would really find useful in their own lives. That’s why critiques and ideas via blogging are so important to us, they give us insights beyond our own.

Now, who’s going to make the PlanningAlerts for the US?

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Inman News Blog has the news that Fidelity’s Cyberhomes has signed a deal with AOL Real Estate to power all of its home valuations. This is a big win for Cyberhomes, which has been steadily and stealthily rolling out new features and signing up brokers to get access to their listing feeds (most recently with Prudential CA/NV/Texas).

Cyberhomes may just end up the ‘dark horse’ winner in the Real Estate 2.0 arms race that is erupting between Trulia and Zillow.

Trulia’s betting its search interface will win out and that their listings will be the ultimate draw for buyers. While the site definitely is easy to use, it suffers from some glaring holes in its inventory and its strategy of handing traffic off to its broker partners may ultimately be its weakest link.

Especially as brokers develop better search tools on their own sites, and do a better job of converting and capturing some of those consumers that Trulia sends them. I know in my own home search I started on Trulia and then stayed on a local broker’s site because I found more listings there.

Zillow, on the other hand, is gambling that Web 2.0 social features will be the ultimate traffic drivers to their site. Unfortunately, I’ve seen little evidence that there’s much demand for this type of activity (see Zillow Flounders A Bit With New Release). I could be proven wrong on this one, but I have a hunch that the “real estate thrill” might be gone.

Zillow might be the most “fun” but it’s still chasing the average consumer, which is a very fickle market indeed.

Cyberhomes, meanwhile, seems to be splitting the middle and focusing on building out a very compelling and rich feature set. The site offers a deep source of data for anyone considering a home purchase. Thankfully it looks like they have resolved their browser compatibility issues too (see Cyberhomes AVM is a Total Joke)!

Cyberhomes seem to be focusing on the serious buyer and real estate investor. And in a down or turning market — when the average consumer is sick about hearing about falling home prices — that might just be the sweet spot.

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