Shari Chase recently launched ChaseNation , a local social network focusing on conversations in the Tahoe/Reno area of Nevada. This was built on Ning’s social networking platform and is a great way to quick start a “social network for anything”.. Membership has risen from 239 members on April 7th to 340 members today.

This is absolutely a good way to get members of a local community to discuss the local market and it is already proving to be a thriving community. There is currently a trend and definitely a lot of talk about mashing up blogging functionality and social networking. Matt at Automattic recently hired the developer of BuddyPress to take Wordpress in this direction. That is awesome Matt! This will make Wordpress a powerhouse publishing/social platform and we can’t wait to use it for business applications.

Fred Wilson has a lively discussion on his blog talking about “Facebook vs Wordpress” and how “blogging is the social network for adults”. Pat at TransparentRE sees adding Ning functionality as the next natural step for blog networks. Current growing real estate blog networks such as Homescopes and WCRBlogs could benefit from these new tools.

For business blog networks , a hybrid approach definitely makes sense. Business blogging is about engaging prospective clients for new business by providing useful and timely information. Writing blog posts, successfully achieves the goal of providing useful and timely content, but posting great content alone does not maximize potential for engagement. You may have lots of readers and subscribers to your blog, but only a small percentage of your readers ever comment. This makes blogsites a natural place to extend these conversation opportunities. As a result of some of these trends, we’ve also been asked to develop a few real estate specific social components for upcoming blog networks and development is underway…we’re excited about these trends and can’t wait to see publishing and social networking come together to deliver a richer blogsite experience….

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