Ted Adler
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I founded Union Street Media in 1999 from my dorm room at Middlebury College. We are now a 30+ person growing web development shop in Burlington, VT. Our clients are in a broad range of industries with a particular focus on websites for realtors. Outside of the working world, I am a Board Member of Vermont Public Radio, Spectrum Youth Services, the Vermont Business Roundtable and the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation. I was the Vermont Chapter President of the Middlebury College Alumni Association from 2001 through January 2007, and on the Executive Board of the MCAA during that time as well.

Web 2.0, Social Networking, Blogging, and Real Estate

In a recent post I included a link to a pdf of Web 2.0 companies compiled by Jamie Glenn of Trulia. Tonight I came across a similar list at the vFlyer blog.

We’re spending a lot of time at Union Street Media thinking about how to help our clients in the real estate industry leverage the new opportunities that are available online. This article at vFlyer does a great job of providing an overview of what’s out there and I highly recommend it as an introduction to all of this.

One of the resources mentioned is a real estate social networking site called ActiveRain. Realtors can set up a free profile there, connect with other real estate professionals, create a blog, and join discussions. You can visit my profile at activerain.com/andyvota and Union Street Media founder Ted Adler’s at activerain.com/tedadler.

There is a good overview of the site at activerain.com/action/default/welcome. One other bonus of being on ActiveRain is that the search engine pickup of the site is quite good — things posted there seem to show up on Google and other search engines very quickly.

Another post of interest is at Inman.

Participation in all of this new social media (blogs, social networks, wikis etc.) is difficult to gauge but several recent attempts have been made to try and measure audience participation. The latest is Forrester’s new Social Technographics report – which came up with this fascinating segmentation.

2 thoughts on “Web 2.0, Social Networking, Blogging, and Real Estate”

  1. I just don’t understand where people find the time to do their social networking on the internet. As a mater of fact, I’ve been trying to get into being active in that field but it just gets harder every time.

  2. I think that one can reap many benefits from social networking online with a minimum of effort. Setting up a profile on LinkedIn, Facebook, and ActiveRain and making a few contacts on each can be done in an hour. They can be added to slowly over time without much work, and often times people find you just because you are on there. I think the key is to focus on what you want to get out of social networking online and stay focused on those specific goals to keep your efforts efficient. Also, it’s important to measure referrals to your site or blog from these sources to see what the actual benefit is.

  3. I think that one can reap many benefits from social networking online with a minimum of effort. Setting up a profile on LinkedIn, Facebook, and ActiveRain and making a few contacts on each can be done in an hour. They can be added to slowly over time without much work, and often times people find you just because you are on there. I think the key is to focus on what you want to get out of social networking online and stay focused on those specific goals to keep your efforts efficient. Also, it’s important to measure referrals to your site or blog from these sources to see what the actual benefit is.

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