We Listened When You Told Us That Time Is Money

The speed of geolocating members and properties has been a source of complaints for some amount of time.

Based on feedback from our customers, we've made major speed improvements on the interface where you can geolocate your member profile or your video content at over 80 countries over at http://catalog.vidlisting.com.

The geodata that we have is extensive. Before the performance improvements, you had to wait as long as 30 seconds (which is an eternity in internet time) for our system to return town level data and latitudes/longitudes. Now, with the improvements, we are generally under one second from both our offices in the US and in South America. Of course, the network speed is a big influence on how fast your data is returned as well.

If you've been and our site before and were disappointed with the wait, go ahead and try itagain ...

What you dont see is that data point for every contry has an associated lat/long that the system can easily associate with you video or with you. This means that others looking for your content dont have to exactly match the town name or zip code in order to discover your content.

We are still working to improve both performance and quality of the data - the state of California returns over 5000 datapoints and still takes just about two seconds which is far better than before but still not good enough. Let us know if any countries or states dont meet your need for speed.

Keep giving us feedback - your functionality will keep improving at http://catalog.vidlisting.com as a result.

Tony

Why Twitter Does Not Work For Real Estate

Don't get me wrong.  I love Twitter and have been using it for some time. Because of my schedule, I'm mainly on in the early mornings eastern time (@vidlisting) but sometimes on throughout the day.

You may be surprised that this post isnt going to be around Twitter's downtime. If you are a regular Twitter user that may have been your first thought about what I have posted here - it's not. :)

The premise of this post is that despite all of the rightful hullabaloo about Twitter, it has some real drawbacks for business users. It's funny but also telling that very few blog reviews discuss Twitter within a business context.

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Here are some of my observations looking through the real estate business lens:

No easy or quick way for customers to find you or for you to find them: The basic assumption about discoverability on twitter is that someone already knows who you are and/or what information is contained in your very brief Twitter profile.  If you are a normal person trying to using Twitter as a lead generation source, there is simply no reliable way for customers to quickly know who you are or for you to know who they are without a large time investment in the conversation required to build a large network of followers (a huge percentage of which will never be a lead).

Here is the unsaid secret of why Twitter works for A-List Bloggers that I've never read anywhere else:  A-list bloggers already have built a critical mass of people that know who they are and often what they do. Think about who you initially followed when you joined: likely it was people that you actually know and then people that you virtually "know" through blogging.

Designed To Be Very Public: Let's say that you do find a prospective customer that has indicated that they are looking for a property in your area. Twitter simply isn't a great place to do pre-sale activities. If you dont have your conversations set to private, everything that you twitter with that person including their interest in services will be available to anyone looking at your or their profile. Before you say that you can direct message the person (or "DM them" in Twitter-speak), you have to actually be following each other before you can commucate via DM.

Additionally, some people (like me) take a gander at people's previous tweets prior to accepting new followers or considering whether or not to follow someone. If those tweets are 100% marketing messages then you'll be less likely to build the network of followers required to build a business network. 

No direct way to pass marketing materials: Twitter has no mechanism to directly pass photos, videos, PDFs, or other marketing materials publically or privately. You'll need to rely on links or otherwise go outside of Twitter to use these.

140 characters is too limiting: It's hard to build a compelling marketing message in 140 characters beyond a simple slogan. You dont even really get 140 characters if the message is addressed to someone. While I view the conciseness required for Twitter compelling from a conversational perspective, having to use 5 messages to give someone more than a slogan is a serious drawback on the business side.

Most of the people on Twitter are not customers: There I said it. Someone needed to. :)

UPDATE: Pat Kitano has posted an excellent response to my blog post at http://transparentre.com/2008/05/16/why-twitter-is-potentially-a-mainstream-media-killer-app.aspx

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So, I love Twitter for social conversation with people that happen to be real estate professionals. However, when viewed a pure business tool, it takes a lot of time without a definable end state. That time could be more profitably spent in an activity with a much higher mix of prospective buyers.

It immediately works for those that have already built a large following elsewhere that happen to also be open to trying Twitter (think about that the next time that you read a review about tech from someone with a large base of followers)

Again, I love Twitter. What are your thoughts?

Tony (Twitter Name: @Vidlisting)

PS - Something better is coming...perhaps even this week.

How New Or Non-technical Users Can Easily Manage and Distribute Video Content Or Real Estate Shows Using New Video Help Features

We've added a bunch of new features in the past week to help new users begin to use the full power of their personal media catalogs as quickly as possible after registering or logging in at http://catalog.vidlisting.com. We understand that members may not understand exactly how a personal media catalog can help them or what they need to do to use it.

What Is A Personal Media Catalog

A personal media catalog is a simple to use virtual workspace for videos or real estate shows (RES) that is available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. In short, its a mix of social network and content network that is geared to business professionals and their customers.

The workspace gives members the ability to to do some of the following:

• make video widgets
• mash videos from different providers such as Youtube and RES into a single widget
• send videos to friends or groups of friends with 4 mouse clicks
• distribute videos to prospective buyers

There is no cost to join. We'll be adding some cross-cultural features that will make it easy for, say, CIPS professionals and other REALTORS to find international partners and buyers even if they dont speak the same language (thereby fulfilling the true global promise of the internet for business)

Video Help

Video Help is a small application within the personal media catalog that displays a tiny question mark icon next to the different types of things that you can do with personal media catalogs. They help guide users that may be unsure of what a feature is or specifically what needs to be done to use a given feature.

The icons link to short videos that explain how to use the given functionality. The icons are unobtrusive, dont block or change any functionality , and members can turn them off/on with a single click (as shown below) from within the media catalogs main workspace.

We are adding video content for the help videos as quickly as possible. We will also have a publically shared catalog where you'll be to subscribe to all of the help videos from within your own catalog. Look for "Vidlisting Support Videos" within the Browse Available Shared and Public Catalogs menu. Video help is live now and is "on" by default for new member registrations.

As of this post, we have a number of videos done (with many more to follow). Samples include the following:

Registration Help
Using The Language Features Of Catalogs
The Basics Of How To Upload Videos
How To Add and Share YouTube Videos And Real Estate Shows
How To Send Multiple Videos To Friends

We are also adding video help in Spanish and Portuguese.

Twitter Based Help

We debated having a user id on Twitter for support and information about Personal Media Catalogs as we have a socaial messaging component which will be added within the week or two and available to all members. We decided that we should do it and so now you can follow @VideoHelp on twitter to get news/updates as well as have any support or other questions answered via Twitter. Assistance in spanish is available on Twitter from @CasaComprar.

Tony

See Also:

-Creating An Auto-Updating Widget For Your Vidlisting Shared Media Catalog
- Why Trying To Manage Video Content Online Generally Sucks
- Why Aren't Video Channels More Like...Well...Channels?
- The Push And Pull Of Social Networking For Business Using Video
- New Ways For Prospective Buyers To Discover YOUR Property Video
- Why Are We So Attached To The YouTube Model To Distribute Real Estate Video?

Shared Media Catalogs Allow You To Instantly Share Your Video Content And Real Estate Shows

Shared Media Catalogs For Video Content

Vidlisting has just launched our shared media catalog functionality designed for content producers and sellers of good and services. Now, Youtube videos, Real Estate Shows, and videos uploaded to our system can be instantly be passed to family, friends, business contacts, prospective buyers, and others that want to view and use your video content. It is far more efficient method than using email or cutting and pasting video files.

By sharing a catalog, you'll give others direct access to selective video content that you've shared. Note that content is shared only when you make it public - you can select which items in your catalog to share and which to make private. The default is always "PRIVATE". International users and investors interested in US content will appreciate that the functionality is available in Spanish and Portuguese in addition to English.

We have a demonstration video of shared media catalogs using real estate video.

Shared media catalogs are different from normal social networking groups in that you dont have to go looking anywhere else to find content from your groups. The demonstration video also shows that members can instantly use content from shared media catalogs to which they have access as their own to include in custom widgets widgets or send to your own network of friends.

You can get your own personal media catalog at http://catalog.vidlisting.com/.

Subdirectories For Media Content

In the next few days, we'll launch another level of social functionality for the media catalog known as shareable subdirectories.  This will be available for premium level members and provides the opportunity to organize and share your videos and real estate shows into shareable subdirectories that function as discrete mini-catalogs. You can organize subdirectories however you decide by theme, location, or type of content (advertising, podcasts, property tours, etc). We are just finishing up the drop and drop capability for subdirectories.

We've also made a simple video preview of the subdirectory functionality.

The functionality is still under development and testing until likely this wednesday so the all of the interfaces in the video are not yet customer ready but it gives you a clear idea of how it will work. Some of the uses for subdirectories include:

- sending personalized groups of videos to a customized group of friends using three mouse clicks. As shown in the video, subdirectories hold a flexible mix of content from different sources (Youtube, real estate shows, and our own system). Rather than sending time uploading videos, you'll be able to better spend your time marketing them.

- wrapping group metadata around related video content: We'll bring value to channel by making searchable metadata for the groups of videos. If geolocation is included as part of the metadata, this functionality will put hyperlocal syndication capability in the hands of non-technical members by using just a few mouse clicks.

- Mapping subdirectories to existing online groups: Organizations with existing portals, blogs, or social networking capabilities will be able to easily map video subdirectories to groups.  The subdirectories can become virtual multimedia storage for these existing online groups and provide a flexible way to deliver specific or targeted multimedia content to group members.

Lots more coming - stay tuned.

Tony

See Also:

-Creating An Auto-Updating Widget For Your Vidlisting Shared Media Catalog
- Why Trying To Manage Video Content Online Generally Sucks
- Why Aren't Video Channels More Like...Well...Channels?
- The Push And Pull Of Social Networking For Business Using Video
- New Ways For Prospective Buyers To Discover YOUR Property Video
- Why Are We So Attached To The YouTube Model To Distribute Real Estate Video?

Vidlisting is a profitable online real estate video company dedicated to helping you get video content in front of prospective buyers and sellers of properties as well as consumers of your products, and services.

Why Trying To Manage Video Content Online Generally Sucks

Huh? A real estate video guy saying this?

Managing video content online is generally available using only four methods (listed below).  All of them are limiting in their own way for business users and here's shocker - none of the methods are actually geared to help you sell products and services. Read on...

Method #1 - Channels:

Almost every video site uses the YouTube-like implementation of channels. We've become so accustomed to using channels that no one ever questions their value. Here are some things to think about with respect to channels.

- Channels Include Only Videos Uploaded To That Infrastructure: When I think of channels I think of my TV...different content on different channels but all on my TV. Ever see an online video channel that includes mixes of video from different providers? Me neither. Channels online are more like mail order catalogs than TV channels since, like catalogs, you have to individually go to each one to see what is in it.

- Channels Are Geared To Content Producers Not Viewers: Channels were made for content producers to store their content not for viewers to consume it. If channels were made for viewers to actually find content then why are channels generally named for their owners and rarely (if ever) searchable by channel? Does my user name, marfie, give you any indication of what may be in that channel? No. There is almost no chance of discoverabilty for videos at the channel level without either prior knowledge of my user name or an assumption that my videos will be appropriately tagged and individually found by search videos. In either of these cases, what's the win in channels for a given user? 

- Channels Don't Work So Well With Large Amounts of Video Content: Talking about managing a few videos in pretty simple. However, think about what happens when your organization begins to expand their video content to include dozens or even hundreds of videos. Sending users to a channel where they may have to wade or page through dozens of videos to find the right one doesn't seem like a scalable solution to me.

- Channels Aren't Business Oriented: You and/or your org has worked hard to gain value in your branding. Now, when your videos are watched from your channel, your customers may be distracted by related content that perhaps isnt your own.

Method #2 - Cut & Pasting Video Players Or Widgets

Cutting and pasting is the traditional method for distributing video content into webpages or blog posts. Certainly, there is soe value in cutting and pasting a player or widget, but there also are fairly strong limitations to the process.

- Potential for Viral Exceeds Realistic Chances For Business Videos: Almost all video players have some sort of "Grab This Widget" or way to re-paste embed code for a given video. This rarely if ever happens and you better off focusing on how to get your video i font of prospective buyers than trying to make a viral video that likely wont be.

- Audience: For business applications, audience shouldn't be measured in terms of just numbers but also proclivity to consume the types of products or services that your business video is offering. The value of cutting and pasting is generally limited to the value of websites that you and your friends close enough to be willing to paste the widget have.  This may be great for people at the top of Google for competitive keywords for consumers of products or services like yours or A-List bloggers that have a large audience but likely isn't such a benefit for someone with a normal level of visitors to their site. Remember that the success metrics for a typical youtube video are sheer views and not the number of sales made.

- Distribution and Scale: A cut and paste approach only scales when the individuals manage the cutting and pasting themselves. Large portal websites with lots of traffic and centrally managed content wont spend the manhours necessary to manually cut and paste video content.  'Nuf said.

Method 3: Emailing links

We all love email and in many ways it is the killer app.  It is included here because it is one popular method for managing and distributing video content. 

- Scale: When emailing links, you have to either send individual emails or a giant email with everyone's name. This isnt very scalable.

- Fragmented Storage: You aren't in control of the organizational habits of the email recipient or the email storage rules of their organization.  Finding the emails with videos sent weeks ago may prove to be a challenge for some folks.

- Reliability of Receipt: SPAM filters and the like all limit the chances that mail with attachments, too many links, or lots of addressees making it to their final destination.

Method #4 - RSS

- Level of technical ability: Ask your customers how many of them know what RSS is and it wont matter if their browser can use it or not.

At Vidlisting, we are working on ways to overcome some of these issues. For instance, in this narrated video demonstration, you can see an example of mixing content from Real Estate Shows and Youtube into a channel and then quickly sharing that mixed channel out to other users that can quickly find it by description rather than user name. No RSS needed - just some mouse clicks. Not shown is that you can also push the same content to groups of friends with just a few mouseclicks.

The platform will also be available for use in your own website or blog network with your own content and look/feel.

Hopefully, you'll start to view video channels online with a different eye. They work well for general videos.  They aren't set up well for business users, are difficult to effectively manage with volume, and don't contribute to video views from prospective consumers of your products or services.

Tony

Video: Fast and Easy Video Bar Widgets That Mix YouTube, Real Estate Shows, And Vidlisting Video

Ever wanted to build a widget for your blog that lets you mix and match Youtube videos, Real Estate Shows, and your own videos? Or wanted a way to get video content quickly into the hands of your customers without cutting and pasting HTML code?

Below is a very short video that demonstrates the Shared Media Catalogs in action from a free level user perspective that supplements the hands-on blog post that we wrote earlier. What you'll see is the power of social networking with multimedia content in a far more effective manner for meeting business objectives than cloning Facebook or Youtube.

The user quickly finds and selects two distinct shared media catalogs from the available list. they are both public so the content may be immediately consumed by the user. One of the shared catalogs is a mix of Youtube videos, Real Estate Shows, and Vidlisting videos. The other is the shared catalog for RAMB and their video interviews filmed at SIMA 2008 in Madrid, Spain.

Within seconds, the user is able to add two shared catalogs and build a video bar widget that includes content from both catalogs as well a mix of real estate shows, youtube, and vidlisting videos. Cool stuff (and the video is in real time by the way - it is that quick and easy)

Here is the actual video bar widget made in the video:

You can get your own personal media catalog at http://vidlisting.com/beta/opencatalog.asp

Tony

See Also:

Vidlisting Video Widgets Now Able To Be Pasted In Wordpress Blogs As Easily As Images
Why Aren’t Video Channels More Like…Well…Channels?
The Push And Pull Of Social Networking For Business Using Multimedia
How To Add YouTube Videos To Any FSBL Personal Media Catalog
How To Add Real Estate Shows To Your Personal Media Catalog
New Social Network Functionality: Making Videos Social In A Way That Builds Your Business

RAMB Video Interview with John Tuccillo, Former NAR Chief Economist

Here is a real estate video interview that we filmed for the REALTOR Association of Greater Miami and the Beaches (RAMB) while at the world's largest real estate show, SIMA 2008. This year's event was held in Madrid, Spain from 8-12 April 2008.

This real estate video interview is with John Tuccillo, former Chief Economist of the National Association of REALTORS (NAR). Mr. Tuccillo talks in depth with RAMB abot the state of the economy and how to "read the tea leaves" for the future. He also talks about international buyers and the importance of learning how to attract foreign buyers.

Tony

We like that as a Vidlisting.com premium partner, RAMB has a custom widget that is completey branded for them and the video plays within RAMB's miamire.com website. More importantly, RAMB can also know where all of their widgets have been posted (even when someone else embeds the widget), how many times the widgets have been rendered, and how many times each widget has been clicked. All of this is accomplished with just one line of HTML code.

Why Aren’t Video Channels More Like…Well…Channels?

Today, it hit me. Channels on popular video sites have always conceptually bothered me a bit but I really couldn't put my finger on exactly why. Finally, I realized that channels on any of the major video sites aren't really like channels at all.

Online Channels Are More Like Mail Order Catalogs Than TV Channels

If you've ever received a mail order catalog, you know that in order to find something in it, you actually have to go the page in the catalog to get more information.  You also have to look at every page of the catalog to know whats available.  Printed catalogs have no way to co-exist with each other. Isnt this jst like using video channels on Youtube and others?

The cable model of TV service brings everything that you order to the same place - your television. You can casually flip through the channels that you've chosen. You also have a guide that spans all of the available channels regardless of the content available.

Read The Rest Of This Post Over On Our Outside Blog about Online Video Platforms

Tony

The Push And Pull Of Social Networking For Business Using Video

Social networking for business can be a valuable addition to any business' marketing plan.  A well thought out social networking plan involves elements of both push and pull.

Push: This element of social networking involves actively sending (or "pushing") multimedia information to a specific someone that you know to be interested. In twitter, you can Most flash video players have some sort of push based sharing functionality based on email which generally involves inputting an email address.  The downside of most video based social functionality is how to collect and store video content that is of interest. Generally, the only means for "storing" video content is to use a linked favorite, cut and paste the player on a web page, and leave the link in email.

Our personal media catalogs allow you to push video content such as YouTube videos, Real Estate Shows, and Vidlisting.com video to friends (read "colleagues", "partners", or "customers") which then they can preview and, upon approval, can become part of that person's media catalog. The content is aggregated in your own personal media catalog for future viewing or further sharing.

So, say for instance, I have a video of a property for sale. In my personal media catalog, I can quickly create a group of prospective buyers interested in that type of property and with a few mouse clicks send them that information.  They preview the video and some accept it.  Some of those that accept the video share the video with others. Version 2 of the personal media catalog will allow the original uploader of the content to see how often the video has been shared (all user names will be obscured).

Pull: This element of the social networking equation is far more passive than the push system. The pull side of the social networking equation involves users making the determination that they want to receive certain types of information or media content. Right now, the only pull type of functionality around that we are aware of involves consuming RSS or other types of multimedia oriented feeds. The issue here is that many of your customers, partners, or colleagues may not even know what a feed is (which needless to say severely limits your ability to use pull type social networking for multimedia).

To overcome the feed obstacle, we're on the verge of adding functionality that will allow users to "pull" content from media catalogs that have been shared. Owners of catalogs can make share content from a shared catalog (some can remain private as well) and users will have access to shared content in an organized fashion right  from their own catalogs. More on the specifics of shared catalogs will follow in later blog posts once we release the functionality.

Say for instance that I am interested in content from a given real estate agent and that real estate agent has a shared media catalog. I can find that catalog by its unique name and add the catalog to my shared content. All real estate video content (including real estate shows and YouTube videos) that have been selectively shared from that catalog is now instantly available to be included in my own catalog with a single mouse click. I can make widgets or further share that content with my own social network using just a few additional mouse clicks.

Applications built on top of shared media catalogs are coming in the next few days as well. We'll actually be using a specific shared catalog to drive part of the special Vidlisting.com SIMA home page next week. Videos uploaded for the event using the page will also be added to the SIMA shared catalog. A simple developer API will also increase the opportunities for pull type social networking outside of the media catalogs as well.

In summary, the ability to either push and pull content is a key part of the social aspect of social networking. Unformtunately, most of social functionality around videos is either clumsy (inputting emails every time that you want to share an item) or very technical (feed based).  Hopefully, we can start to make inroads in making both sides of the push/pull equation in social networking easier to use.

Tony

See Also:

How To Add Real Estate Shows To Your Personal Media Catalog

Vidlisting Real Estate Videos To Be Available Via FSBL Media Catalogs

How To Add Youtube Videos  To Your Personal Media Catalog

New Social Network Functionality: Making Videos Social In A Way That Builds Your Business

Video Interview With Kent Payne Of Gran Pacifica, Nicaragua

Here is a short video that we did some time ago with Kent Payne of Gran Pacifica. Kent is an icon within the American community in Nicaragua. He is one of those just very friendly, good guys that you come across occasionally in the world. It is hard to go anywhere in Nicaragua without meeting him or at least hearing about him.

In this short video interview, we talk with Kent about Gran Pacifica and also get his thoughts about investment in Nicaragua. Enjoy!