The real estate society page

So Tuesday night's "Beer w/Bloggers" bash at SOMA hot spot the Thirsty Bear turned out to be a little too much of a succes for its own good. There was barely enough room to turn around in the upstairs room reserved for the event, and the crowd spilled downstairs into the bar. This made working the room a little harder (isn't that why we were all there?) but also made it easier to transcend the superficial and engage in some protracted conversations with whomever you happened to be jammed up against.

By the time I made it to the top of the stairs, Sarah Field and Nicole Nicolay ("NikNik" to friends) of MyTechOpinion had the undivided attention of Transparent Real Estate's Pat Kitano, before Trulia's Jamie Glenn horned in (that's Sarah, Nicole and Jamie in the pic up top). The noise levels were approaching those of a stadium rock concert, and I was unable to discern exactly what it is that MyTechOpinion is all about. But Sarah handed me a business card that provided the site's URL and a four-word description, "Technology for Real Estate."

Marlow Harris, author of 360Digest (left, with Michael Stark) was also frustrated by the noise level when Zillow's Drew Meyers hopped on a pool table to make an announcement. We were all under the impression that Drew had some important news to share, but the only part of his message that seemed to have been widely communicated was that the beers were on Zillow (that's Drew and ActiveRain Network's Matt Heaton swilling Zillow pints, below). "What did he say? You're supposed to be a reporter," Marlow chastised me.

I figured Drew was spreading the word about Zillow's new blog, where technology experts will teach real estate professionals how to make the best of the Internet (see Greg Swann's take on this), Later, when the crowd started thinning out to go to another bash hosted by Trulia, I was able to make my way over to Drew and confirm that's what he was talking about. He directed me to Zillow's own explanation of the site.

It wasn't just the crowd drowning Drew out but Michael Stark of LookForProperty.com, who was telling me about a magazine article he'd read on his flight to Connect. The article, about Seattle real estate, had mentioned Marlow, and Michael said he'd wondered if they'd have a chance to meet. Marlow said Michael was one of the first to recognize the value of exchanging links to boost search engine rankings in the '90s. She said another of Michael's sites, NEORealEstate.com, was "my very first link" to her own site, SeattleDreamHomes.

Connect is an industry convention where people have two main goals: find out what other people are doing that is working for them, and pitch (or publicize) their own services to prospective clients. What you hear from folks is often pretty carefully scripted -- especially if there's a lot of time, money and effort behind it. 

But there's also a lot of genuine passion, particularly on the part of the indie guys like Michael -- who bent my ear about how far the real estate industry has to go before it taps into the power of the Internet. "It's a vertical of pygmies," he said. The upside, he said, is that "a lot of people who are nobodies can come in and make a dent."

I also bumped into another passionate guy, Ken Horst of Agentopolis. Horst is a mortgage broker who's created a site where real estate agents post their bios and upload listings and are rated by consumers (Well, sort of. The agents get veto power over the reviews, which makes it a little dubious from the consumer's perspective). Horst said he's inked a deal with a major blog provider that will give clients the ability to blog through the site. He's also using some of the same technology that allows agents to upload listings to Agentopolis to get a new site off the ground, MLSmaps.com, that uses WolfNet Technologies' map-based search tool MapTracks. 

Horst's other projects include FirstHomeGuide.com, a site geared at first-time homebuyers that will tap real estate agents to provide "hyperlocal" content such as advice for buyers.

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