Comments on: Trulia Throws Agents a Bone

By: A Web 2.0 Education in the Comment Thread(s)

A Web 2.0 Education in the Comment Thread(s) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:24:36 +0000

[...] immediate outcome of the situation is that Trulia developed new technologies for their site as reported over at the Future of Real Estate [...]

By: Chelle

Chelle — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 12:08:53 +0000

It’s certainly a start…will be interesting to see how this one evolves.

By: retrove

retrove — Thu, 22 May 2008 23:42:09 +0000

@Jake – great observation and one that many more will notice as time progresses.
Interested in your thoughts with this…

“Trulia has to make this change; they can not go on with their original business model.”

A) why do you think they can’t afford to drive the traffic directly to agent sites?

B) What happens if some big brokers start to pull feeds based on the current model of T trying to keep users on the site vs. passing along as you have indicated?

By: Rudy from Trulia

Rudy from Trulia — Thu, 22 May 2008 22:57:38 +0000

Hi CJ!

Awesome meeting you at Unchained.

You can manually upload your listings and open houses for free on Trulia. Just visit the link below:

http://www.trulia.com/submit_listings/

Go for it CJ

Best,

Rudy
Social Media Guru at Trulia

P.S. I have a lot of blog comments and emails to catch up on due to my travel and meeting schedule this week.

By: retrove

retrove — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:52:00 +0000

It will help the satisfy the agents for now but in the long run I suspect Trulia will probably have to do more to continue pleasing the agents with the symbiotic relationship.

T’s monetization model is initially similar to R and agents have always had an issue with this, so there is no reason why it would be different with T. When you consider that R already has about 2-3 times the amount of visitors and many agents don’t find value from R… T needs to be able to provide real value beyond just traffic.

The RE communities request cannot fall onto deaf ears at T like they do at R due to T’s dependence on the RE community for listing data which is why they were quick to provide these perks. The T crew is very smart and part of the reason for the new ad network is probably in anticipation that they may have difficulty in monetizing the agent community directly in the future.

By: CJ

CJ — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:48:38 +0000

Good move. But I would still like to have the option of inputing listings manually instead of waiting for Trulia to pull from my vflyer or postlets feed. And I would like to be able to directly enter Open Houses instead of emailing them in. Ya listening, Rudy?

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:41:25 +0000

I think the real story here is the email feature. Trulia started as a click-thru model, much like Google Base. Every little feature they add, keeps you on Trulia longer and not clicking thru to the Realtors website. Now consumers can even contact the listing agent directly from Trulia with out ever going to that agent’s website. Trulia used the click-thru model to get Realtors to send them listings, by describing how Trulia would drive that traffic to the Realtors website. Now that they have the listings, they will focus on keeping the consumers on their website longer and longer which will help them monetize their website.
Trulia has to make this change; they can not go on with their original business model.

By: Eric Bramlett

Eric Bramlett — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:38:05 +0000

From an SEO perspective, this is them breaking the old bone up into 5 pieces, and throwing it to the agent. The amount of PR a page passes is divided among the number of outbound links on a page. Here's a good breakdown of Page Rank from SEOMOZ. If you don't want to read all of that, I snipped the most pertinent slide here.

By: Missy Caulk

Missy Caulk — Thu, 22 May 2008 10:23:43 +0000

Fantastic, no bone throwing here. I love it ! When and branded all my listings. I could find all but one. But, will email Rudy today. Not sure why sent through KW feed and vlflyer. But, this is a great addition.

By: Richard Dale-Mesaros

Richard Dale-Mesaros — Thu, 22 May 2008 03:15:25 +0000

Hmmmm, at least Trulia have the foresight to make changes and take action. Maybe if the good ol’ MLS were to become a bit more transparent and do a better job of keeping up with the latest applications for search, they might stand a chance of hanging onto what’s left of their status as the industry standard.

Thanks for keeping us posted, Joel,

Richard
Chief Deal Weaver
http://www.BlackWidowNetwork.com