Trulia to Active Rain: Your Days Are Numbered
Breaking news from Inman Blogger Connect: Trulia has announced that it is launching a blog platform. I don’t have a link, because this was on a piece of paper, but there will be an official announcement later.
I actually had a chance to speak with Vicky Gkiza, Sr. Product Manager for Community, at Trulia and… well… she’s a lovely, lovely person. In more than one way, actually — take a look:
She was really nice, very kind with her time, and extraordinarily smart — as is sort of par for the course for the boys and girls at Trulia. But the point is not to talk about Vicky.
The point is this: Trulia may not intend to put ActiveRain (and others of its ilk) out of business, but the impact of this blog product is to do precisely that. As a matter of fact, I have a bet with Vicky now that I plan to collect at Inman in 2010.
Here’s the thing: Trulia has 5 million unique users each month, by their own count. If you’re a real estate agent doing a consumer-oriented blog, then what you’re after are consumer readers. ActiveRain, Agentgenius, and any of those guys may have a great platform, but until and unless they can provide consumer traffic to the tune of 5 million uniques per month… I’m afraid the value simply ceases the exist.
I have to take pains to point out again that Trulia probably doesn’t intend malice upon ActiveRain or other similar consumer-oriented agent blog networks. As they see it, they just want to help their agent members connect with their consumer visitors. Once you have listings, then have Trulia Voices, then Trulia Q&A, the agent blog is the obvious next step.
I’m just pointing out the obvious: if you’re an agent, and you want to have a blog somewhere, why would you do it anywhere other than at Trulia Blogs? ActiveRain, as it is, has a tendency to be realtors talking to other realtors. Which is fine, and might be great for an industry-focused blog like this one, or the Onboard Informatics corporate blog, but… for an agent who wants to blog to drive leads and grow business, I just don’t see the value anymore.
What this product does is divide the RE.net in half: those who are focused on consumers, and those who are focused on industry. The agent blogs have to find a reason NOT to blog on Trulia. (Presumably, a good one might be Zillow’s answer, if they have one.) The industry blogs may want to continue at places like ActiveRain or independently.
Perhaps after Inman is over, I’ll have to do some thinking about what this means in the even bigger picture: now that Trulia is creating a compelling platform for agent blogging, together with listings, together with Q&A, together with consumer traffic… what is the next evolution for the Big Brokerages like Century 21 and so on?
-rsh
If indeed Trulia will allow links to be followed by the search engines, this is a good thing. But that does not mean the end of ActiveRain, not by any means. ActiveRain has a strong precense and that won’t go away that easily. Plus, anyone that understands SEO will understand the value that both sites will offer to your own site. For those of you that don’t get that, visit my website and I can help you develop such a strategy! http://www.FoundByDesign.com
It seems that everybody is jumping in the game with their agent blogging platforms. Not a bad for the Truila, Zillow and HomeGain’s of the world. But, is it really good for the agents? Wouldn’t it be better for the agent to spend time and energy on their sites and blogs they actually own? Instead they continue to help these Giants get even BIGGER. Before long the search engines will only be full of these large Nationwide sites agents will have no choice, but pay them for their online exposure. It will be the only option. Maybe I am missing something???
The whole No Follow issue is another concern as well. Trulia wants agents to put all their gadgets on their sites with a real link to boost their search engine rankings, but are a little stingy when it goes the other way. Basically telling Google I do not trust this site. Now is that a fair way to treat the ones that are boosting them??
@Jeff
As Heather from Trulia mentioned, they’re doing away with the nofollow tag, so that’s a moot point.
The question is whether blog networks/platforms are good for agents. I guess my answer to that would be what the agent’s goal in blogging is. There are only three reasons to blog, when you get down to it: Pleasure, Fame, and Money.
I believe anyone blogging for pleasure (like me for instance) probably doesn’t care one way or the other.
Those blogging for Fame should probably do it on their “own site” just in case they do get famous somehow.
The Money-bloggers, however, really have to balance the revenues (both present and future) vs. “ownership”. Since I view blogging for agents as a form of advertising, it really is a question of reach vs. control. For now, I just can’t see what the value of an “owned” blogsite that gets 30 visitors a month is to a Money blogger when they can tap into millions of visitors at one of the network sites.
-rsh
I thought this had happened a long time ago with http://www.truliablog.com? I guess that is why most the info on that site is negative towards trulia. I for one refer my clients to http://www.propertymaps.com. I use this site myself – there are no ads or people trying to grab you – just a good google maps/mls mash-up. I also had never thought about a blog restricting “ownership” of your content…..very interesting. I guess I just need to keep reading your comments to learn my stuff!