[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba_oOjoSJx8[/youtube]

Since launching its F8 platform, the social network Facebook has seen a staggering number of applications developed for it. So many that it verging on becoming a menace – I’m already getting overwhelmed with updates from people who have questions they want answered, or some Pirate games they want me to install.

Despite the noise there is still some very interested work being done with Facebook. Some innovative developers are using the network to reach out to the community at large and get the “wisdom of the crowd” to enhance their databases. An example of this is the Cities I’ve Visited app, which was developed by TripAdvisor – I suspect as a way for them to compile a list of the most popular travel destinations.

One of the early movers in the real estate space is the Neighborhoods application, which was developed and launched by the real estate web site provider Point2 Technologies. It’s a pretty popular application – as of this afternoon it had 21,136 daily active users. Testament to its widespread appeal, it even got a nice nod from the Lost Remote TV Blog recently.

I asked the guys at Point2 for some hard numbers from this project and this is what had for me.

User Base Growth

As of Aug. 31: 1:00 p.m. – 84,370 users…

Daily growth rate is 5,000 to 7,500…Growth rate is doubling every 5 to 10 days at present

29 countries available/active…will continue to add to it

Very impressive numbers.

But what’s even more interesting here, when you dig deeper, is that Neighborhoods is tapping the viral nature of Facebook apps to refine Point2’s database of hyperlocal neighborhoods. It’s getting the Facebook users themselves to tell Point2 where they live. To suggest new neighborhoods where the none may already exist, to correct errors where they exist. It’s rather like conducting a huge Census survey. For free.

Many Real Estate 2.0 sites are out there right now trying to tap the crowd (e.g. my-currency, Zillow) to build out their content but, in my opinion, they are using a flawed Field of Dreams approach (“If you build it, they will come”) to grow the datasets on their sites.

Neighborhoods, on the other hand, is an interesting experiment of the reverse. Don’t make the crowds come to you, go to where the crowds are. Leverage that huge user base and put them to work for you.

It doesn’t stop there either. Point2 has successfully used the traffic as a way to feature listings from its agent pool, and is seeing very good results.

As for traffic back to agent listings, we are tracking around 12+/- percent of total daily users viewing the listings, which is very encouraging.

When F8 first launched, I suggested a few applications that could be developed on the platform (see Facebook Could Make or Break Real Estate 2.0). Three months on, I’m surprised there have been few takers. Perhaps these numbers will shake them out of their slumber.

Share on Facebook

John L. Scott’s Neighborhood Wizard was just the latest by a web site to clean up map based real estate search (see The Evolution of Map Based Searches). And while I called it a ‘gimmick’ in my earlier post, it is an important step forward towards making map searches more usable.

Point2 Homes has released a new release of their site recently that adds a similar feature by layering on a search box over a Google Map. This is a pretty significant release for Point2 that really brings their map search functions up to par.

First impressions – the overall design of the site is pretty utilitarian and the house icons were a little too cartoony for my taste. It also doesn’t work in Safari. But these are merely quibbles, functionally the site hits a home run.

Switching between the move icon and the drawing icon is slick. Drawing a search box around the area in which you are interested and then refining it as it zooms in, has always felt to me to be the most natural way to start a search. John L. Scott’s “Etch a Sketch” is perhaps a little more refined, but Point2’s implementation just feels easier to use.

Once you’ve defined the area you’re looking in, the Point2Homes map makes good use of AJAX to dynamically load the listings in the right sidebar, as you click on each. You can switch between the listing description and the search filter quickly and search results are reloaded dynamically as you refine your search. I liked this alot, it works very smoothly.

For each listing, you get a thumbnail image and a basic run down of property features (beds, baths etc.) – though if you want more information on a listing, Point2Homes takes you to off to a separate page. One feature I really like was how it knew the name of which neighborhood you we’re searching in (sometimes I didn’t know the name) and offers to show you more listings as well.

Ultimately, the biggest drawback is simply the lack of listings – Point2Homes pulls its listings from individual agents in its system rather than an MLS
feed or broker feed. For that reason, I can’t see Point2Homes ever being a mainstream real estate search page.

It’s too bad really, their innovations will probably go largely unused. What I’d really love to see is some sort of map search Frankenstein, that culls the best features from Point2 and Trulia, maybe throw Shackprices and Redfin into the mix too.

Share on Facebook