Findsyou.com, why is this relevant?

Posted on October 9th, 2008 by Mike Carter

As recently announced by Estate Agent Today, a website called Findsyou.com has wow’d the industry by signing up over 1000 agents to their ‘free’ service. Let me play ‘devils advocate’ to what I see after using this service for all of 15 minutes.

  • What is this website? A wanted ads posting system?
  • Email 4 Property. Is Findsyou trying to do exactly what Email 4 Property does?
  • Where is the innovation here?

I tried using the system and it seems to be just an interface for ‘collecting my requirements’ which are then forwarded to agents. I suppose that’s how it works. I dropped out on the third page of form submission.

Attention product managers over at Findyou- your typical web-user is not super keen to sit thru web form after web form of data collection. I’d keep an eye on your drop-rate.

And one last devil’s comment -  adding 1000s of agents to a free service is nothing shocking. You get an email list of all the agents you can find in the UK, not a difficult task, then you spam them to join a free lead generation service. Then you call your PR firm to ‘announce’ your success.

Ok, maybe I’m just grouchy today, but would love to hear what people think of Findsyou.com and why this is relevant.

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2 Responses to “Findsyou.com, why is this relevant?”

  1. Guy Walker, on October 9th, 2008 at 3:01 pm Said:

    Dear Devil’s Advocate

    The article made a mistake about my past which will be corrected. Our Chairman is the ex CEO of AskJeeves. I wasn’t.
    I can see why you might not see what value we add. We don’t show houses, and we don’t show agents. There are plenty of places for Agents to show this, your service being a good one. We only show the demand side of the home-seeking equation, i.e. what people are looking for. We can be described as Wanted Ads, but with a real difference in that if the request matches a registered Agents’ preferences, then the agent is informed automatically, and they can get in touch directly. These Wanted Ads are therefore a bit more responsive than people would normally be used to.
    This saves time for the home buyers or renters as they only get responses from interested Agents who can help, without lifting a finger, and the agents have a cost-free lead and direct contact, which is the first step in what they are good at – selling homes. It’s a win-win situation, and fully automatic for both sides, and neither needs to constantly browse the site for it to work. Its also free but won’t be forever, and the Agents joining know that. It will not be costly for anyone to use.
    The good news for you also is that we don’t compete with existing portals as they will obviously still be used, and Agents will still advertise. We are an additional service, which Agents can see the value of. Even if something is free, Agents time is valuable, so they will only invest it if they can see it helping them either immediately or in the short term.
    We are unique, but because of this, it sometimes takes time for people to realize that they cannot pigeonhole us with something they recognize. Once they do – the power of what we are doing and the benefit is blatantly obvious.
    We like feedback, and welcome it. The comments about form filling are valid and we’ll look at this. As for our recruitment methods, if we have something relevant and useful then an email isn’t spam, unless we also try to sell them cheap Viagra and Manhood Enhancing treatments (whatever they are). Agents are not dumb, and wouldn’t join if they didn’t see value. It would be interesting to see how Zoomf attracted agents. I don’t suppose you built the site and just waited around until it was found.
    In short, we are not a scam, we are very relevant and we don’t compete with you, so stop picking on us.

    Regards

    Guy

  2. Mike Carter, on October 9th, 2008 at 4:02 pm Said:

    Hi Guy,
    Great commentary on your service and please don’t take my comments the wrong way. Our blog here at Zoomf is meant to spur discussion and commentary on the space providing some transparent opinions, gripes, how-to’s on technology etc. Nothing more nothing less.

    To answer your question about Zoomf, actually that is exactly what we did. Build a great product for agents in London, gathered lots of relevant feedback and moved to building the product for the rest of the UK. Attracting agents to good services is not the real challenge. The real challenge is providing something for consumers that really changes the game as far as increasing the very inefficient market that is online property in the UK.

    Good luck with Findsyou.com and let us know how things progress.

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