I continue to be amazed at how companies are starting to use Twitter in a professional way (see for example my profile on Best Buy’s efforts with @Twelpforce). Another case in point: RealEstate.com is today launching the beta version of @Housewatch, a Twitter bot that can instantly deliver statistics and information to home buyers, sellers and agents who use the social networking service.
Here’s how it works: you follow the (protected) account, and as soon as the bot follows you back you can use a variety of commands through direct messages sent to the account. RealEstate.com’s Housewatch can respond to simple commands to automatically deliver data on everything from median home values to neighborhood crime statistics and monthly mortgage calculations. To get an overview of which commands are supported, you can DM the word ‘commands’ to the bot, but here’s the full list:
Stats – median home price (by city)
Value – home value (by address)
Income – median, per capita and median disposable income (by city)
Weather – monthly high and low temperatures (by city)
Demographics – population count and density (by city)
Cost – cost of living including local sales tax and a ranking of household expenses based on an average of 100 (by city)
Transportation – median travel time to work in minutes, and average use of public transportation (by city)
Environmental – air pollution and ozone indices based on an average of 100 (by city)
Crime – total, personal and property crime rankings, based on an average of 100 (by city)
Fixed – monthly loan payments including insurance and taxes
Equity – amount of home equity using current value minus outstanding mortgage balances
Amort – full amortization schedule including monthly payment, total interest paid and total amount paid over the lifetime of the loan
Information sent in response to most of these commands will evidently include a link to more comprehensive information found on the RealEstate.com website, but the company has humans on Twitter who can guide people looking for more info as well (Dennis Kuntz aka @RealTweet). Ironically, Kuntz appears to be on holiday so the automated responses will have to do for the moment.
All in all, it’s pretty cool way to get access to this type of information from RealEstate.com, even if I’m not sure how many people exactly will be using it, unless they’re die-hard Twitter fans who refuse to simply visit the website and also happen to be looking for a house while tweeting.
Though the explosion of social media and networking tools adds tremendous value to end-users, wonder if there is a sustainable revenue model in these ideas.
Similar to some sms services reflavored in trendy twittery way.
This is how we used Twitter to build our note taking application http://glunote.com
I know the first question is always “how will it make money” but for me it wasn’t about money at all, it’s about putting together something useful, that I can use, and if other people find it useful they can use it to.
I doubt that’s RealEstates motivation but I suspect it’s really more of a feeder into their main product. Good on them for having the foresight to do this.
That’s a service which I see pretty useful, getting real estate info on the go. Services like this really make sense and can easily be monetized.
>who refuse to simply visit the website and also happen to be looking for a house while tweeting.
or see a house while driving around and want immediate info. It’s abt mobile, not simply twitter.
There was a similar bot on Twitter called VayuZillow made by Vayusphere but it appears it was taken down on Zillow’s request.
Previous coverage appears here: http://www1.pro...ter-innovation/
Think about it this way – RealEstate.com is using Twitter as a *free* SMS text messaging system, instead of having to pay a company for this service and then try to get people to sign up to receive texts from them. Twitter provides the infrastructure and user base at no cost.
IMO, I wouldn’t worry too much about what RealEstate.com’s revenue model is. I’m more curious about how (and whether) Twitter can find a way to monetize these types of tools that companies are creating..
I don’t really see the point of this. They would be better off creating a good site for mobile devices, which would get you the information much faster than typing in commands and then checking you messages.
I certainly agree, which is fine if you have an iPhone, or something similar. However, there are many more people who don’t have these devices that probably constitute a large percentage of RealEstate.coms client base. This gives everyone with even the most basic cell phone access.
I guess it makes sense for people who only have sms access.
Not sure if there’s a monetization play here, but look at it this way– it probably didn’t cost much to build and they’re getting coverage on all the tech blogs, with dozens of very valuable backlinks which they can use to drive PageRank to their interior pages they actually hope to rank for.
Paid traffic is pretty expensive in the real estate vertical, so every inch they move up in the search results has a massive value to them. So the upside may be the whole PR coverage-> Links-> Rankings-> Organic Traffic equation.
Buzz, yes. But I think the point of the article is how folks are using twitter as a technology enabler. In this case, I just don’t see it. I tend to agree with Martin (above) that a well designed mobile site would be much better than this. I’d also be concerned with how accurate the system is.
But back to Jeremy’s point- If all Twitter is doing is generating buzz, then its 15 minutes are about over.
It’s good to see the emergence of unique methods to deliver professional content within Twitter where the focus is on enhancing the User’s Experience. Not just creating ad units.
We’re looking forward to seeing this expand to include entertaining and engaging conversational content within Twitter that is coupled with the ability to deliver a User supporting information they seek.
By combining interactive writing with AI technologies, Twitter affords a platform to deeply engage Users as participants in “conversation.” This is an opportunity for Brands and their agencies to think beyond “pushing” messages that alienate Users and integrate more seamlessly within Twitter and add value to those who opt-in to Follow.
i like it but too late..
I think it will be a while before using Twitter to find a home or real estate info useful – I use it on my website http://www.slicefinder.com to simply fins anyone who tweets about pizza and uses an image. But for serious home buyers?
useless to me until I can DM the service with the address of a house and then when that house comes on/or goes off/ the market, the service DMs me back.
I really really really really want to buy the house I lived in when I was 15. That house has only come on the market once since I became and adult and I missed it.
go talk to them and see if they will sell the home to you
Or deliver housing data for free using Local Bunny
Drop a sign on the listing that says i.e.,” Tweet the word 123MainStreet to @broker”. The user gets back the vital info the broker entered and the broker gets the lead without paying Realestate.com.
DR
Local Bunny doesn’t have a “free” model listed on it’s site? What are we missing?
Also, getting a single Tweet/140char back re: a house, even with a TinyURL to open mobile web page is not as targeted of information as the RealEstate.com platform appears to offer? And, there doesn’t appear to be any ability to drill down to gain deeper info w/Local Bunny?
Just trying to get some clarity since it’s not clear on site.
And, if you really need mobile web to access meaningful data, why doesn’t the broker just list a mobile friendly web link on their Signage for each house? Or, the SMS suggestion sounds far easier to implement, and then the Realtor nabs a phone number in the process.
Let’s face it, houses still aren’t selling. Realtors are notoriously the cheapest folks out there and slowest to adopt new technologies (if it costs them anything). They’d never pay $99/month to gain Twitter followers. They desperately want a phone call or email address.
I think Realtors will be the last adopters of anything Twitter.
I do think there are some great apps for Local Bunny, but, chasing Real Estate? While it seems “natural,” it is a slog.
George, I don’t know where you live, but here in San Diego, homes under $450K sell quickly and the seller usually has 2 to 10 offers to choose from. Admittedly most are REOs.
Again, I can’t speak for your realtors, but my observation on the true professional realtors is as follows:
1. They do and have paid a ton of money for things that often never worked out well. There are many who have been surprisingly early adopters. And of those, many “bought” but never used or never used well the products. And they pay a ton in subsciption fees, dues, insurance, etc. They are definitely NOT cheap.
2. I do agree with your implication that there are many more who seem to be dinosaurs and would (almost) prefer that computers never existed.
These are not two distinct people – my wife, a real estate broker, fits both descriptions.
3. I just came from the real estate technology connect conference in San Francisco, put on by Inman news and social media was definitely the big push. I think you will be surprised at how quickly the realtors adopt yet another avenue to reach their clients.
I was at the tech conference to demo http://www.FinestExpert.com as a nationwide property search engine to find cashflow positive properties. While we were showing the map view, agents were busy twitting about how totally awesome the search is.
We’ve been getting nice results with our TwitterBot, which lets anyone get new car reviews and scores simply by sending us an @reply with the keyword “find” and a model. For instance:
@motormouths find Prius
We have an APP (the TrialX Twitter App) that does something similar and it uses NLP. The app enables anybody who wants to find a clinical trial to send a tweet @trialx (followed by CT) and we automatically parse the tweet.
For example a user may send “@trialX CT i am 55 yr old, female and looking for Breast Cancer trials in FL”. The App can extract the disease name (e.g., breast cancer), the persons location (Florida), age and other criteria and send the user a tinyurl to a page on TrialX.com that lists trials matching those parameters. Folks have been using this APP on Twitter for 3-4 months now. The app can parse thousands of medical conditions, since we utilize a semantic network of medical concepts.
We call this type of app a PRIA -personalized and responsive information agent
Twitter bots maker: http://t411.linkstore.ru
I have followed the dev of this app and see how easily it can be monetised across a wide range of B2C products… its great to see how apps are being dev’d to make greater use of social media like twitter, other than just a status or spam update!
Wow – all of the comments are awesome.
As far as the true usefulness of this bot in particular, I leave that to the users to decide – and I hope they will (the more ideas the better!).
We’re very aware of the novelty of this application . That being said, my perspective is that Twitter specifically, and social media in general, has barely been tapped in terms of its usefulness, both in servicing consumer needs as well as offering information on demand. This bot just serves to show how easily one can integrate access to meaningful data outside of person to person dialogue into the growing stream of “online social consciousness”.
Real estate has so many opportunities to make use of technology in ways that have yet to be fathomed. I hope people find the bot helpful, and we will definitely be seeking to expand its capabilities over time. For us, this represents another small step forward toward RealEstate.com building a broad array of real estate focused tools – mobile/social-based and otherwise. We will continue to innovate and evolve to help our consumers and agents to further our mission of being “all things real estate”.
Oh, and yes, I am on vacation, but that’s why I have a laptop ;)
I certainly agree, which is fine if you have an iPhone, or something similar. However, there are many more people who don’t have these devices that probably constitute a large percentage of RealEstate.coms client base. This gives everyone with even the most basic cell phone access.
And we’d certainly love ideas for more!
For story and character combined with artificial intelligence within Twitter, here’s another example of what we’ve seen:
http://twitter.com/saruhAI
If you send an @saruhAI to it, it starts a conversation that is more like IM. Some seems scripted, some seems AI conversation. Just found one good use for the parody character based on former Governor of Alaska: She can calculate tips (and also sent me a Wikipedia link when asked “What is Twitter?”
Great article!
I wanted to let you know about TweetLister.com, a fast-growing tool for posting, managing, scheduling and searching real estate listings on Twitter. We just announced our Version 2 release, featuring enhancements that add tremendous value and marketing power for all its users. The service remains a free, fast, simple, user-friendly way to place your real estate listings on Twitter, and enhancements transform the service into a versatile, full-featured, must-have tool for marketing any property.
The website is located at http://www.tweetlister.com.
Version 2 features are: Enhanced Listing Details, including more photos, more property features, personalized links to your website, and more; Broker/Owner Profile Information and Dedicated Listings Pages, including a page with your bio and all your listings; Associate Multiple Twitter Accounts with one TweetLister Account, so you can post properties for different regions, or different types of properties, or individual brokers to their own Twitter accounts; New Search Features, so you can now search by City or Neighborhood, State, Country, Keyword and Minimum and Maximum Price; and the ability to Add Listings in Bulk, a custom service.
I hope you will take a look at the site and consider mentioning it on your blog!