Trulia Launches iPhone Version
Realtor.com has an iPhone version of their site (available at iphone.realtor.com) and now Trulia has joined the party and released an iPhone ready version of their search tools; complete with a tongue-in-cheek video to promote it.
Unlike Realtor.com’s version however, it doesn’t look like Trulia’s site is a custom theme for iPhone’s mobile Safari. (Shameless plug: you can read FOREM in its custom iPhone version by bookmarking this URL in your iPhone.)
And so unfortunately, there does feel like there’s still an awful lot of pinching, zooming and scrolling around needed to see the site properly. It does however feature some pretty slick integration with the iPhone’s Google Maps application - click on the directions link under the map display and it’ll dumps you over to the address in Maps. Nice.
Nevertheless, it’s a incremental step forward towards a truly great mobile real estate search tool and now that Apple has released its SDK for developers (see Apple Releases SDK Kit for iPhone) I’m going to be curious to see if we’ll see any dedicated real estate applications in the near future.
Also, it looks like Trulia has implemented my FOREM Quick Tip - How to Add an iPhone Icon to your Web Site. Excellent. Too bad Realtor.com still has a janky icon when you save it to your Home Screen though.
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Ryan Elliott | Mar 28, 2008 | Reply
What is the address of the Iphone site for trulia. I go to trulia and looks like the normal site to me. Am I missing something? How is this an Iphone version?
Joel Burslem | Mar 28, 2008 | Reply
I found the same thing Ryan - which is why I called it an iPhone ready version not a true iPhone version of the site. I think the real news is the Google maps integration - but I don’t like that I still have to pinch, zoom and scroll around to get there…. it’s a little annoying
Ryan Elliott | Mar 28, 2008 | Reply
Thanks Joel, It is a bit frustrating. I would like to see a true Iphone version like Housefront, pockettweets, facebook, and many other web apps out there.
Hi! I'm Rudy from Trulia. Nice to be here! | Mar 28, 2008 | Reply
Hi Joel!
The iPhone specific version is certainly in the pipeline. We’re are working on some other really cool things which we hope to launch in the coming weeks/months first.
REBLogGirl | Mar 28, 2008 | Reply
Very cool. I love anything that works on my iphone and nano. I’d definitely like to see them develop a real app for it though. So many cool things they could have done with the geo location. They have the listings and market data…
Ryan | Mar 28, 2008 | Reply
The treo is the way to go! I have a 700wx but I would even take a Centro over an iphone anyday! iphone = sidewinder
Rob | Jun 16, 2008 | Reply
Old school: we had the iphone version of our real estate portal (market leader in Germany with 3Mio uu/June, over 1Mio objects) launched with the German iphone launch in November 2007. Check it out at iphone.immobilienscout24.de. Now the sdk is there, we will rework it.