Over the last few years many of the major real estate search sites have moved over to Google Maps from Microsoft’s Virtual Earth as their mapping API of choice (Redfin being the most recent notable defector). HomeGain, Trulia, Homefinder, Estately and others all use Google Maps. But, interestingly, both the #1 and #2 sites; Realtor.com and Zillow, are still Microsoft clients.

Given that, they will likely be interested to hear that Microsoft has announced that they are now rolling in Photosynth technology into the Virtual Earth platform.

Photosynth is a platform that grew out of Microsoft Live Labs (see Next Generation Virtual Tours) and allows for amazing 3D environments (“Synths”) to be stitched together out of 2D photographs.

From the press release:

Photosynth software analyzes digital photographs and generates a 3-D model by “stitching” the photos together. These models, or “synths,” can now be viewed using Silverlight technology across multiple platforms. Virtual Earth brings together features, functionality and content that help consumers, businesses, citizens and governments bring location to life. It helps businesses and governments share location-based information, build better connections with consumers or citizens, and helps organizations make better operational decisions. With the integration of Photosynth into Virtual Earth customers will be able to create detailed 3-D views of anything from places to products and from hotels to homes.

Most recently, it was used to create an immersive view of President Obama’s inauguration on CNN.com called The Moment. (If you haven’t seen it, go check it out – it really is pretty amazing)

Rolling Photosynth in Virtual Earth has some pretty big implications for real estate as one could imagine a developer could take widely available assets (listing photos) and roll them into a pretty nifty 3D representation of a property that’s for sale.

You can see a sample “house Synth” on the Microsoft Virtual Earth site. (Click on the sales sheet for a really slick representation of what’s possible)

Cool factor aside. Whether or not this is a big enough feature to get some of these other sites to switch to VE, that’s another question all together.

Update: Here’s Microsoft’s video on the integration.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGWwOAz2AiQ[/youtube]

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Redfin relaunched this morning with a brand new mapping interface using Microsoft Virtual Earth platform. They’ve retired the old Flash based maps, which frankly were looking a little long in the tooth.

By moving to the Virtual Earth API, Redfin can now concentrate on building out new features on the site. Redfin’s blog gives a good overview of why they choose to go with Microsoft over Google.

First impressions, I like it, but…

Redfin’s web site now looks like everyone else’s. Rival Seattle-based broker John L. Scott, for instance, uses the same Virtual Earth technology. Now, I never liked the old Flash maps and am happy to see them gone, but the result unfortunately is the new site has a pretty generic feel to it.

The new house icons are a significant improvement over the previously highlighted parcels, but the green house pins feel a little disjointed from the rest of Redfin’s branding – Maybe they should have been red? (They do kind of remind me of the houses in Monopoly though.) Finally, there’s no obvious difference between a single family or multi-family dwelling, something that ShackPrices.com does much more intuitively.

While dropping the proprietary maps surely will save them tons of development costs and frees them up to easily start adding new cities (their website now announces they will be heading into Southern California, Chicago, Boston and Washington DC soon), by jumping on an open API Redfin has lost a significant point of differentiation from its competition.

Arguably they do still have one of the better interfaces of the realty search sites and they continue to add new interesting features (like the ability to instantly chat with a Redfin agent) but the reality is the rest of the industry is quickly catching up.

This means Redfin looks less and less like a pure tech play and will increasingly have to compete on the strength of its business model, which they insist is working.

Ultimately, I believe this is a good thing however, as it’s the business model not their web site that going to sink them or make them a success.

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Microsoft is adding 3D maps to Virtual Earth, reports Marshall Kirkpatrick on Techcrunch. You can see an implementation on Live Search right now.

It is very impressive. This is a huge step forward for Live Search, giving it capabilities previously only found in desktop applications like Google Earth.

Check out this view of the Las Vegas strip (Click on each image for a closer look).

It does require downloading and installing a separate package in order to see the 3D imagery – but once you’ve installed it, the effect is stunning and you quickly forget you’re using an web-based application.

It was particularly thrilling to be able to overlay realtime traffic data onto the map and imagine the possibility of navigating other data sets in three dimensions (Zestimates, home for sale, etc.).

Virtual Earth 3D is currently only available in 15 cities and you’ll need a high end computer and the latest versions of Internet Explorer to view it (sorry, no Firefox).

What’s even more interesting is Seattle real estate broker John L. Scott and discount broker ZipRealty are part of a beta group of advertisers who have launched virtual billboards inside Virtual Earth 3D maps. The 3D billboards are clickable hyperlinks.

This is really moving online advertising into a whole new arena. I’ve written before about advertising in virtual worlds, but I’d always though Google Earth would be the first mover here. Kudos to the Microsoft Virtual Earth teams for delivering a knockout product.

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