{"id":2531,"date":"2008-01-23T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-23T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=2531"},"modified":"2008-01-23T15:05:04","modified_gmt":"2008-01-23T22:05:04","slug":"is-roostcom-roosting-on-the-brass-ring-start-up-realtybot-comes-to-market-with-two-firsts-mls-listings-and-a-business-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2531\/is-roostcom-roosting-on-the-brass-ring-start-up-realtybot-comes-to-market-with-two-firsts-mls-listings-and-a-business-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Roost.com roosting on the brass ring? Start-up Realty.bot comes to market with two firsts: MLS listings and a business plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

What if somebody built a Realty.bot that seemed to make sense from Day 1? What kind of goof-ball strategy is that in the wacky world of Web 2.0?<\/p>\n

I don’t know if Roost.com<\/a> really has a business to bank on. The search.bot horizons are starting to look a little crowded. But unlike past entrants, the company is entering the field with two unprecedented features: They’re working from real MLS listings, via member-brokers’ IDX feeds, and they actually have a strategy for monetizing their efforts.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Yawn! YAMBS again? That’s Yet-Another-Map-Based-Search, a transition in the course of two years from the cool to the commonplace. I haven’t been able to play with Roost.com yet, but my guess would be that they’re behind the curve on cool-factors. The search tools seem to be more than adequate, but Roost is all about search, with none of the social-theater-of-the-mind games the older Realty.bots have been rolling out.<\/p>\n

This is nothing but residential real estate search, with 13 major markets being served at today’s roll-out. Since the listings come from IDX feeds, Roost.com needs at least one broker relationship for every MLS system it wants to service.<\/p>\n

There’s more. Roost.com plans to make money by delivering prospects back to member brokers on a Cost-Per-Click basis. In one scenario, as in the screen-shot above, the broker can have his own private-label Roost.com IDX system hosted on a third-level-domain — e.g., tarbell.roost.com. Every click originating on that site would go back to Tarbell.<\/p>\n

Alternatively, brokers can participate directly on the Roost.com system, with the end-user click-throughs being distributed in a manner similar to Google’s Adwords program: Participating brokers would be selected at random based on their desired spending goals.<\/p>\n

I’m eager to play with the system, because what I’ve seen of it so far seems cool. As an example, the image below shows a windolet of photos. You can have more than one of these open at one time, so you can compare photos from multiple properties.<\/p>\n

Roost.com is essentially a free IDX system for brokers that they would only have to pay for when they are receiving benefits from it — this in the form Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What if somebody built a Realty.bot that seemed to make sense from Day 1? What kind of goof-ball strategy is that in the wacky world of Web 2.0? I don’t know if Roost.com really has a business to bank on. The search.bot horizons are starting to look a little crowded. But unlike past entrants, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,5,19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-disintermediation","7":"category-marketing","8":"category-real-estate","9":"category-technology","11":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4104,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/4104\/clash-of-the-titans-women-shriek-and-children-cower-in-blood-spattered-suburban-enclaves-when-realtybots-collide\/","url_meta":{"origin":2531,"position":0},"title":"Clash of the Titans: Women shriek and children cower in blood-spattered suburban enclaves — when Realty.bots collide…","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 26, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"There's news and then there's news. Consider:A real estate industry study released today shows that most popular consumer real estate search engines, including Trulia, Zillow, Google and Yahoo!, offer home seekers only a small fraction of the homes actually available on the market -- and that many of the listings\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2542,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2542\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open-17\/","url_meta":{"origin":2531,"position":1},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"January 27, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"There are 18 entries on the short list this week, out of a long list of 78 posts. A lot of news, so a longer short-list. Upside: A boatload of fascinating reading. Vote for the People's Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1156,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1156\/databases-fall-short-of-needs-at-realtybots\/","url_meta":{"origin":2531,"position":2},"title":"Databases fall short of needs at realty.bots","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 16, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This is me in today's Arizona Republic (permanent link): \u00a0Databases fall short of needs at realty.bots Realogy, the giant, publicly traded conglomerate of big-name brokerages, recently announced a deal whereby it will feed all of its listings to realty.bots, Trulia.com and Google Base. That's a mouthful. First, what's a realty.bot?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1848,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1848\/oh-good-grief-not-another-one-stealth-real-estate-start-up-is-long-on-promises-short-on-details\/","url_meta":{"origin":2531,"position":3},"title":"Oh, good grief, not another one! “Stealth” real estate start-up is long on promises, short on details","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 24, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"If Groucho Marx were to come back to us as a hen, aghast but still sardonic, what would he (she?) do? Peck around in the dirt, no doubt. Comes next a \"stealth\" start-up called roost.com, which promises \"to fundamentally change how customers find & move into their next home.\" When\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1115,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1115\/true-reform-in-the-real-estate-industry-will-not-result-from-undermining-buyer-representation\/","url_meta":{"origin":2531,"position":4},"title":"True reform in the real estate industry will not result from undermining buyer representation","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 5, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been sitting on a post from Jeff Corbett, The X-Broker, for a few days. Jeff Argues that Realty.bots will eliminate buyer's agents. This actually ties in with recent announcements that major brokerages will be feeding listings to Realty.bots like Trulia.com and Google base. I get the idea Jeff thinks\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":877,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/877\/feed-the-starving-realtybot-zillowcom-is-underwhelming-so-far-as-a-national-property-listings-service\/","url_meta":{"origin":2531,"position":5},"title":"Feed the starving Realty.bot: Zillow.com is underwhelming, so far, as a National Property Listings Service . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"January 9, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I think I have to back off -- for now, at least -- from my earlier expectations for Zillow.com as an incipient National Property Listings Service. To this date, anyway, Zillow's appeal to sellers and listing agents has been underwhelming, at best. As I write, there are 19,250 homes listed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}