activerain updates: Geo targetting featured profiles on home page
- 09/10/06 07:39 AM
I just thought I'd let people know ahead of time of a change that will be going into effect early this week, so we don't get hundreds of support emails saying something is broken. We are going to try targeting the featured profiles displayed on the front page to the state the person viewing the page is in. That means instead of always showing the top 2 people on the network, we will instead show the top 2 people in a particular state. What state is used will be based off the IP address of the person viewing the page, in much … (12 comments)
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activerain updates: Rate this blog post
- 08/31/06 05:34 AM
Roberta Murphy mentioned in a blog post this morning that she just noticed a new control at the bottom of each blog post (when logged in) titled "Rate this blog".
It's not actually new, it's been there all along, we just renamed it from "Do you find this post interesting?" It gives us another way to order posts based off of member response. Is it directly tied to scoring of blog posts? No, not directly, rating a post higher won't automatically give/deduct someone points. But it is an influencing factor in our new blog scoring scheme. It also helps us to quickly identify … (13 comments)
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activerain updates: Blog scoring updates
- 08/31/06 04:59 AM
Ok, so we tried it and we heard from you, a lot. We tried going to a system of manually scoring every blog post in an attempt to stop to people posting garbage for points, and to control spam. It actually seemed to work fairly well in that respect, but it opened up a pandora's box of other problems. Often times it took us several hours to score the next batch of posts and ocassionally posts slipped through the cracks and weren't scored at all.
So we're going back to the old system, sort of... All posts that meet a set of criteria (over … (10 comments)
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activerain updates: Redefine and Refine Your Associations
- 08/29/06 09:10 AM
Ben wrote earlier today about a number of new updates. There are a more to come of course but today I feel it's most important to talk about the new ability to group to group your ActiveRain Contacts. As this Network grows it will help you to be able to discern your closer associates. Now you can categorize your ActiveRain contacts and each can belong to multiple groups. What was your associates list can now be broken down into categories. This is useful for organizing the different types of relationships you form with The Real Estate Community.
Do you have a specific group of … (12 comments)
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activerain updates: Duplicate content and established real estate bloggers
- 08/27/06 09:27 AM
During the last week or two I had been very glad to see a couple fairly established real estate bloggers such as Jim Cronin (Real Estate Tomato), Joel Burslem (Future of Real Estate Marketing), Greg Swann (BloodHound Blog) beginning to post on the ActiveRain Real Estate Network. This morning due to a well intentioned email from Dustin over at the Rain City Guide warning of duplicate content penalties Jim and Greg removed the posts that they had made from ActiveRain. I was a little sad to see these posts go because of the great comment conversations that had been built up by … (11 comments)
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activerain updates: Added new profile type (Real Estate Media)
- 08/15/06 09:44 AM
We went ahead and added an addition profile type to the network, "Real Estate Media". We thought it would be a good idea to get members of the real estate media involved with the network. We're already seeing examples of where the commentary from our members is being picked up by more mainstream real estate media and I also think that they can bring lots of interesting perspective to the network as well. … (7 comments)
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activerain updates: Scoring evolution: Blog post scoring changes
- 08/11/06 08:43 AM
We are constantly evolving how we award points in order to reward the members who make the best contributions to the growth of the network. We have decided to change the awarding of points for blog posts from being an automatic process (200 pts for every post) to a manual process done by us and moderators. This will allow us to reward points based off quality instead of simply quantity.
This means that when you make a post you will not instantly get points, but posts will get reviewed and scored, probably within a hour or two. The members who make thoughtful, quality posts will end up getting more points … (42 comments)
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activerain updates: Brio Realty integrates with the ActiveRain Real Estate Network
- 08/08/06 04:01 AM
Just the other day we found another interesting use for the network. One of our customers Brio Realty has an IDX style home search on their web site. Brio wanted the ability to have their top agents displayed in various communities, cities, and counties that are part of their home search.
We built Brio the ability to flag which of their agents on the ActiveRain Real Estate Network should be featured in different locations of the home search. We then provided a simple rss feed that was included in the home search. This allows their agents to manage their online presense through … (10 comments)
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activerain updates: ActiveRain's purpose and do we have a hidden agenda
- 08/04/06 08:59 AM
I thought that we'd try to address some concern members/perspective members may have even if they have not been openly expressed. Many real estate professionals have worried about what is the long term goal of this network, do we have a "hidden agenda" and whether it truly benefits them to participate.
Admittedly there has been a lot of skeptacism in the real estate community that last few years, and rightly so. There has been a long list of companies that have made lots of money by trying to wedge themselves between the consumer and the agent. I've been openly critical of the business … (33 comments)
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activerain updates: Manual point bonus for interesting/unique/helpful contributions
- 07/22/06 02:15 PM
Some members has expressed that we should provide additional opportunities for them to earn points. So, we are going to start awarding more bonus points to members who make helpful, interesting, or unique contributions to the network. This may include but is not limited to writing interesting and unique blog posts, answering questions in the forums, etc. These points are awarded at our discretion, but are meant to encourage members who help build a healthy real estate community.
Bryan Tutas was the first recipient of a 1,000 point bonus for having the both the most interesting (as rated by members) and most commented on blog posts yesterday. … (19 comments)
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activerain updates: Blog comment spam
- 07/22/06 02:09 AM
This issue has been brought up by several members who have been tired of other members leaving short, non informative comments on their blog posts in what appears to be an attempt to gain points. The has a detramental effect of cluttering up the blog postings and also causes the poster to receive unwanted comment notifications if they have email notification turned on. This is the definition of spam...
As we've said before points are meant as a way to reward members for taking actions that help grow the community. With that in mind we identified two members who were the cause of almost all … (38 comments)
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activerain updates: ActiveRain - Forums are now live
- 07/20/06 02:39 PM
We just launched discussion forums on the ActiveRain Real Estate Network. These forums are accessable anywhere you are on the site via a link title "Forums" on the near the top of the screen. There are currently about 20 different discussion forums on various topics ranging from "Introductions" to "Search Engine Strategy" to "Feedback on ActiveRain"
If you have questions on pretty much anything real estate related, post it in the forums, and I'm sure someone around here will have an answer. No posts there yet, but given how active this community is, I'm sure there will be soon.
-Matt Heaton (ActiveRain CEO)
… (8 comments)
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activerain updates: ActiveRain - Blogging categories and groups
- 07/20/06 01:40 PM
We just put up a new feature on the network to try and solve some of the clutter in the blogging section. We added 3 blog groups:
1. Group blog for real estate professionals (Read posting guidelines...)
2. Group blog for consumers (Read posting guidelines...)
3. Regional news and information (Read posting guidelines...)
When making blog posts you now may choose to have your entry show up in one or more of these groups. When you are viewing blog entries you may now choose to view only entries that fall into one of these groups. So if you only want to view entries … (15 comments)
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activerain updates: ActiveRain integrates with Google Base
- 07/19/06 01:02 AM
We just finished implementing another way to help members of the ActiveRain Real Estate Network promote themselves and their businesses online. As of this morning we are now submitting profiles of members (real estate agents and brokers) into one of Google's newest services, Google Base (beta).
What is google base?
To quote Google, "Google Base is a place where you can post all types of content and have it show up on Google." It's essentially a big searchable database of structured content. This content is then used to populate their various searches such as Google Maps, Froogle, and even their main search. When content is added to Google … (39 comments)
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activerain updates: More ActiveRain updates
- 07/16/06 03:22 PM
Our developer Ben, just put up a bunch of new updates to the ActiveRain Real Estate Network. Pretty much all of them are based on feedback we recieved during the last week.
1. This last week we made a change so members only recieved points for 3 blog posts within a 24 hour period. This was found to be to confusing so instead of a 24 hour period, we do it by day with the cutoff being midnight PST.
2. Added "Tag Clouds" to both personal blogs, and to the view of the group blog. You can now see what tags are most popular … (21 comments)
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activerain updates: ActiveRain blogging updates
- 07/12/06 06:23 AM
As discussed in a previous post "The blog dumping epidemic" we implemented several changes to the blogging in an attempt to solve some issues brought up by our members. We implemented a limit of posts within a 24 hour period a member will recieve points for. We also implemented a cool feature where members can flag whether they find a particular blog post interesting or not. Only currently logged in members can mark whether they find a post interesting, and you can not flag your own posts.
Based on this we added an additional sorting option, and link on the front page, where members can … (27 comments)
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activerain updates: The blog dumping epidemic
- 07/09/06 01:01 PM
I'm sure some of our members have noticed this. Occasionally a new member to the network will decide to essentially copy and paste the entire contents of an offsite blog or website into many posts on ActiveRain. While it's their blog and we want to let them do what they want with it, two issues arise. We don't want to reward them for doing this via points, and we need to provide an easy way for readers to sort through the new posts to find the ones they most want to read. So to help solve this issue, the following changes … (34 comments)
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activerain updates: Scoring adjustments
- 07/08/06 05:14 AM
During the last update to ActiveRain on Friday we made several adjustments to scoring and points. These adjustments will NOT effect points previously earned for actions, just for those actions going forward.
Why we do adjustments?
Points are intended to be a way to reward people for taking actions that help the ActiveRain Real Estate Network grow (inviting people, blogging, etc). Points affect things like your placement on the site, higher placement, more the more consumers who will find you. As the network matures there we will introduce more ways that having lots of point benefits our members.
Occasionally we will adjust our scoring when we find that we … (8 comments)
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activerain updates: Stability Updates Go Online
- 07/07/06 10:47 AM
Thank you members. So many of you have done your part by taking care of your profiles, blogging regularly and inviting your associates to join.
As you know the network is still in Beta at this time. From time to time things will come up that need addressing. Many of you have diligently kept on the programming team when you noticed an adjustment that needed to be made or an issue that has come up. Your messages are very much appreciated.
We just completed a major update to increase the stability of the Network. During the update some scores may have displayed incorrectly. … (10 comments)
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activerain updates: Forums on their way
- 06/30/06 05:50 AM
One of the next things we're going to add to the ActiveRain Real Estate Network, is discussion forums. Initially this will simply be a list of public forums but then will expand to allow users to create their own forums both public and private. We're trying to put together a list of the public forums we should include in the first round. Here's the brainstorming off the top of my head:
IntroductionsGeneral DiscussionActiveRain TipsAdvice to SellersAdvice to BuyersInternet PromotionClient ReferralsIndustry NewsAny suggestions or input is appreciated...
… (9 comments)
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I just thought I'd let people know ahead of time of a change that will be going into effect early this week, so we don't get hundreds of support emails saying something is broken. We are going to try targeting the featured profiles displayed on the front page to the state the person viewing the page is in. That means instead of always showing the top 2 people on the network, we will instead show the top 2 people in a particular state. What state is used will be based off the IP address of the person viewing the page, in much … (12 comments)
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