The 1st Day at Connect was a huge success, especially with the Bloggers Connect debut!  Joel Burslem , host at InmanTV asked for feedback regarding Bloggers Connect and our response  - "Absolutely a Must!" for any new or experienced blogger.  One of the most encouraging trends we noted was the large number of new local blogs that have been started by so many agents.   Discussions and sessions talked about everything from how to monetize your blog, to best blog widgets, to using blogs to manage your online reputation.   

The main conference kicked off with spectacular panel duets featuring:

Zillow's Rich Barton and Dale Stinton - CEO, National Association of Realtors 

Trulia's Pete Flint and Russ Capper - President, Prudential Real Estate Services

This was as usual some of the best panel match-ups that Brad Inman has been known to consistently deliver.  

Day 2 should be a blast with many more geeky sessions…

Popularity: 59% [?]

A few days ago, Trulia announced they inked a deal with Realogy.

That’s because today we announced a strategic marketing agreement with Realogy Corporation, the largest real estate franchisor and owner and operator of residential real estate brokers in the U.S, to put more than 500,000 of their affiliate real estate listings on Trulia.com.
Source: Truli-a Real Estate Milestone

That same day, Realogy announce that they putting listing on Google base, and Trulia 

Parsippany, N.J.-based Realogy has added about half a million listings from the three brokerages to Google Base and to Trulia.com, a real estate search engine started in 2005 that makes money through advertising.
Source: Businessweek.com

So who wins the battle of the listings? We all do!

This is a major breakthrough for all real estate tech developers, access to 500,000 listings using google base API's.

Is this bad news for Trulia? of course not…they are way ahead of the curve and one of the top real estate search websites. If the not the best. so the rest of the developers will have to catch up. The questions is will they?

One downside is there are going to be a lot of junk sites using homes to generate traffic for their adsense revenue. We have no problem with sites spidering our listings, but the links better all go to us. If I search for one of our listings and I find it on a scraper site, with I link going to some other brokerage, I get spun up. 

Is there a way to stop scraping? I don't know

Can agents get more control over their listings and stop it? I think so, but maybe not?

Popularity: 15% [?]

Remember the “Where’s Waldo” books? Try to find this little guy with a hat in a sea of people…Well here is the Where’s Waldo of web Logos…Can you find the Trulia Logo?

Actually its pretty easy, it’s right there in the middle. It is the only Real estate Logo on there…For now (Please add us:)) .

The site is called www.thelogohomepage.com and is large, and still growing logo site. They also use snap to give a quick preview on mouseover. It loads fast and even though at first it seems overwhelming, it really is a good way to get traffic. About 3-4 months ago I saw a site on the news about airfare estimation/predictions…but I forgot the name. I just found it again on logohomepage, it’s called www.farecast.com

Cool site, I’ll check out every now and then to see new logos, and get ideas…

Popularity: 10% [?]