For several months we've been talking about how we are going to construct a consumer facing side to ActiveRain. There has been a lot of speculation on what form this would take, so we decided to give our members a sneak peak into the ongoing development efforts at Localism.com We are still several months away from an "official" launch of the site.
In the same way in which we launched ActiveRain about half a year ago, it will start off very rough but we will continuously improve on it and add functionality. Localism is essentially a sister site of ActiveRain, displaying a much more consumer friendly view of the content written by our members. As development efforts continue we will add several very powerful tools for creating connections and interactions between our members and the consumer. Ultimately it will be able to compete for consumer eyeballs with other portals such as Realtor.com, Trulia and Zillow but in a much more agent centric fashion.
What is localism?
Or more appriately, what will localism be? Localism will be the premier spot on the Internet for accessing local real estate information provided by those who understand local markets the best, real estate professionals.
- Find meaningful real estate information, not just demographics and listings.
- Get perspective on local real estate markets from the experts.
- Interact 1 on 1 with agents to get your questions answered (without providing personal info).
How will Localism make money?
We might as well address this straight out of the gate because this question has already come up. Localism will NOT be a lead aggregation site, it is built to send free traffic back to contributing members. We will provide some premium sponsorship opportunities and run some additional advertising that doesn't create conflicts with our members interests.
I'm sure you will see Localism morph on a weekly basis over the next several months in the same way ActiveRain has. We welcome any feedback you have, as it will help us in developing the direction for this site.
If you live in the Western Washington area, Kirkland ActiveRain Get Together December 19, 2006 at the Wild Rover
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