Kris, Kerrie and Bob asked me to pen a blog post on ActiveRain and (hopefully) add some perspective on the incredible amount that has been invested into ActiveRain by Market Leader and Trulia over the past year.
All this work has culminated with a professional design, new SEO architecture for the site, better, simplified navigation, improvements to the ActiveRain profile pages, and now a pretty dramatic update to the Blog Post, the Blog Home and the Blog Archive pages. The Blog Post pages and Blog Home are amazing, packed with lead capture tools and additional SEO power (based on the new SEO schema). The Blog Home is easier to use, search, filter, and feature your best work on ActiveRain.
I am incredibly proud of this team. The entire team here at ActiveRain, Market Leader and Trulia have really done a phenomenal job rolling out these changes to ActiveRain and shepherding the community through a lot of change in 2013 (both product and community).
It has all made me wistful. I went back through some of my old files. We are actually in the process of moving offices from Kirkland to downtown Bellevue, so we are packing up all our physical, paper files (yes, we have a lot of those). I came across this presentation from 2007 made by the founders of ActiveRain right at the start of this great experiment and community we call ActiveRain.
Take a quick peek. Remember this is ActiveRain circa 2007.
Unique personality on ActiveRain is right!
Even though this document is probably close to 7 years old (I'm a pack rat), it is dead on in terms of the power of ActiveRain. I always say that ActiveRain is a unique and special corner of the Internet with THE MOST caring community of real estate professionals in the world. ActiveRain is the best place for real estate professionals to educate each other. ActiveRain is also one of the only places on the Internet with true hyperlocal information on a neighborhood and city for consumers.
Market Leader and Trulia value the ActiveRain community and we continue to make large investments in the infrastructure, the SEO, and the design and user interface of ActiveRain. Over the next 12 months, you probably won't see a dramatic user interface overhaul like we just completed (thank goodness!), but you can expect us to continue to improve the technology behind the site. We are going to be upgrading the software platform underneath ActiveRain, introducing better mobile solutions, improving the search and discoverability of content, improving the SEO, and developing more ways to help you capture and manage leads from your ActiveRain blog.
The potential for the future has me bursting with pride! Whether you joined AR back in 2006 or yesterday, you, the community continue to make this place shine.
If you have a moment, please go here which lists out the team here at ActiveRain. Drop them all a line and let them know how much you appreciate all their hard work!
Thanks for all your help, patience, and hard work and I hope to see you all dancing in the 'Rain!
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