Pete, did you really do that?
Are you familiar with Trulia Voices? According to the information on the Trulia’s website it is a place for “real questions & answers from people like you”. For last few weeks I became a frequent visitor to this site. I am a fan of Trulia as you some of you possibly noticed from one of my posts, “Who started Real Estate Revolution”.I was browsing through new questions section on Trulia Voices earlier today and I came across the following question: “Where is the best place to buy a new condo in SOMA? I heard some really good things about SOMA so I wanted to know what new developments should I be looking at or avoid. Any info would be greatly appreciated.”
I was just to start replying it, when I took a quick look at the name of a person asking the question. It read: Peter Flint – A home Buyer in San Francisco” followed by his profile “I am looking to buy in San Francisco and interested in understanding the real estate market in the Bay Area and across the US. I am the founder and CEO of Trulia.com and keen to hear any suggestions on how we can improve the service. Get in touch, I want to hear from you!”.
The reason behind the question seemed obvious - to bring replies about SF neighborhoods from clients and real estate professionals and to attract more clients to the Trulia’s website. A perfectly legitimate reason for a start up company.
And then…
But let me explain first, for those who don’t know Trulia Voices, how Trulia is enticing professionals like us to answer questions. For every participant they keep scores including a number of first answers, a number of useful answers, a number of all answers provided and a number of questions asked and a number of BEST answers by a participant. Best in every category are featured in on the Trulia Top Voices page (check it up and you will see AR familiar faces there!). A nice bonus on a journey in search of clients, I thought.
And then I read the only two answers to Pete’s question at that time, one from “Jaime” and the second from Pete Flint himself – praising Jaime’s reply (by the way it was a mediocre reply at best). Next to the Jaime’s answer – I noticed the mark “BEST”. Frankly, I was taken aback by the fact that Pete marked the only reply as BEST. As it didn’t make sense to me, I looked to Jaime’s profile. It said (by he way, I copied this quote): “I work at Trulia, a real estate search engine, and have been working in the real estate industry for about 10 years. I spend a lot of time online and think that the Internet can provider people with a vast amount of information”. I looked for more information on the Trulia’s website and found out that Jaime is Trulia’s Vice President, Product Management.
As I am a little bit slow, I am still trying to understand what I have just discovered. A CEO of a new, revolutionary real estate company with $18 M of VC investment behind his belt is trying to boost his VP of Product Management as a real estate expert to make a Trulia Top Voices list? Pete? Is it what you are doing?
I find it tacky. What do you think? Please share your thoughts.
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