"In 24 months Localism will have more traffic than Trulia and Zillow combined." Jonathan Washburn July 28, 2008
Here are the month one results. In all honesty I expected the first month traffic for Localism to be a down month due to Google having to reindex the entire site. Turns out I was wrong; Localism grew by over 50%!
But we still have a long ways to go. Good thing both Trulia and Zillow shrank this month.
Ruthmarie,
I will look into it a little later, but at first blush I bet those three big cities are over the 40,000 population limit and are therefor un-sponsorable. So if you buy a community or two under those big cities (which I have a hunch you did) then you probably will be the sponsor of those big cities come September 1st.
:)
Again just a hunch. I will touch back a little later.
It looked like someone bought out the whole thing.....Sorry....it's just that from what I can see, no one from my county ever had a shot at them. They were gone by the time I logged on at 3:15 (UNAVAILABLE) - Now with only two people over 100,000 and no one over 200,000...how??? Since the other rainer has already said she took two small towns - and nothing more. I bought up stuff around it - to try to deflect the problem. But its a mess.
Just as an update...I can't get into them at all to do anything. It's like someone sucked up all the communities available . I noticed on Sleepy Hollow - I had a choice for sleepy hollow and the manor....I could click on either one. White Plains no... nothing. Same with Yonkers and New Rochelle. That's 1/3 of the Westchester population (real estate) that didn't go to a Westchesterite if I'm correct.
Ruthmarie - None of the 3 cities you mention above - White Plains, Yonkers or New Rochelle - are/were available for DIRECT sponsorship, because all 3 have populations OVER 40,000.
Go read Bob's post here, http://activerain.com/blogsview/615432/Localism-Sponsorship-Land-Rush, and pay particular attention to the following section, near the bottom of his post:
What cities are we able to sponsor directly?
You will be able to sponsor a city directly if the city population is under 40,000 people based on the census data from the 2000 United States Census. All the cities that have populations over 40,000 according to US census data will not have a direct sponsor option.
In the cities with over 40,000 residents, the person that has the most community sponsorships on the first day of the month will get an automatic sponsorship of the city. These automatic sponsorships will start September 1st.
Here is a link to a spreadsheet of Cities over 40,000 people that won't have a direct sponsorship option
Jonathan - OUTSTANDING!!! I think everyone knows that they are part of something BIG! REALTORS taking back the online real estate business!?! THANK YOU... THANK YOU... THANK YOU...
This is amazing. I have a very good feeling about AR becoming the site of choice for consumers and real estate professionals. As long as the real estate community maintains high professional standards in posting information we should find ourselves attracting consumers interested in what we have to say and interested in doing business with us. ~Evelyn
Jon, I have no doubts about AR's capability. But this is good to be able to visually see how great it is.
Will you throw a big party when Localism smokes the competition? Hope it happens sooner than later.
no need, when alexa and other ranking sites start getting the info back to their servers, active rain will then be listed on forbes list and so on, in lamens everyone will be throwing a party when it gets advertised and talked about on tv and elsewhere. That's when the investment of sponsoring a few communities will really pay off. I keep telling people that it's not too late to buy a community even with the land rush ending yesterday. There's still a lot available and keep in mind that, once out of beta, the whole world (businesses) can buy these communities as well. In other words you have the chance of a lifetime now to buy them before everyone else gobbles up the rest. You snooze you lose. I think Localism will become one of the hottest tickets on the net and perhaps even sneak into the top 100 websites in the world(activity wise; hits) as i can see both consumers and businesses checking community pages out in the future for event information alone. Stay tuned, this whole thing is still unfolding but if you are reading this article and you haven't bought a community AND if you're a realtor, AND IF YOU KNEW ABOUT IT, well then you're really going to regret it. Just my hunch :)
I want to personally thank you John for an incredible job on this network and considering all this was done in a span of only a couple years, well ti's just remarkable.
btw: I would suggest to people (if they want Localism to grow) to participate in other online communities and offer insight about Localism.com. For example, replying to posts at communityspark. You can also see first hand the benefits of Localism by seing some other small blog communities prosper, such as this one: dublinblog
Now we just need realtown to become part of Active rain and gg.
Wow, that is some awesome stats - already - I can vision where it is heading - to the TOP! ~Rita
Thanks for the insight...As others have said, I will be doing my part to make it a success!
Jon,
Congratulations on a great start to Localism.
Over on ZillowBlog, I just posted Zillow's accurate traffic statistics for July 2008: 5.3 million unique visitors for the month, per our internal Omniture logs. Compete (which you cited) and all other public traffic measurement tools are based on a panel of users which are supposed to be representative of Internet users. But the only truly accurate way to measure a website's traffic is from their internal logs.
Looking at third party sources, Hitwise (which we have found to be the most accurate) now puts Zillow at #3 (behind Realtor.com and Yahoo Real Estate).
Here's the Top 20 from Hitwise for July 2008:
Spencer, Thanks for the official numbers. I was excited to see them on your personal blog the other day as well. Sure, Localism is only 350k unique visitors now to your 5.3m, but we're gunnin for ya!
Jonathan, I am so excited to be on the ground floor of Localism, even if I didn't get to sponsor any communities. I see this as a grass roots site, originated by those in the business, not dictated by some robot like Zillow. You have come to the people and invited us to be part of something much larger than ourselves, and together I can see your vision and I think you are spot on - you/we will be bigger than Zillow and Trulia because there are more of us than there are of them :)
This is sooooo on my AR To Do List. I will go back through this group and get inspired.
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