Zoomf Blog - UK Property Blog.

Active Rain has launched a very interesting pay per click product called Listing Router. Active Rain is arguably the biggest social network for real estate agents in the USA. You can think of Active Rain as the best parts of Facebook but with a professional twist like LinkedIn.

Anyway, within the internet space, people are very curious as to how social networks will best serve advertisers. Active Rain is attempting to crack this problem with it’s new Listing Router service for a property social network. We’ll be watching this space to see how it evolves.

So this week Facebook launched yet another string of lovely products for businesses. Businesses can now have their own ‘page’, similar to the profile that you or I would have. Users can then show their love for various products by being a ‘fan’ of them, companies can’t invite members to be fans but if someone signs up as a fan themselves then it will be on the company’s page. Similarly products that users are fans of will also display on the user’s profile.

Companies have the ability to learn more about their fans, can painlessly message them all at once and can announce product updates on the page. All in all, Pages seems pretty sweet and it’s absolutely free. It will be interesting to see if any estate agencies create pages, Future of Real Estate Marketing have already written a nice article about whether or not people will actively want to seek them out and declare themselves as fans.

Other nifty products that have been launched this week include ‘Beacon’ and various advertising opportunities. You can read about them on Facebook here.

And as you can imagine, Zoomf are all hooked up with a Facebook page! Some may think it’s clever tactics, but really any excuse to be fiddling around on Facebook just has to be taken up!

So please add yourselves as fans (you can find our page here) and may you all have a gorgeous weekend!

So it seems that a quick check of who’s ‘poking’ you can render you unemployed. 70% of employers are planning to ban access to Facebook in the office and many city firms already have. So is it really fair that social networking sites are being branded along with hardcore porn sites by the company network filters?

In my opinion, hell no. Some employees will always be slacking, take Facebook away from them and they’ll still be on Wikipedia trying to find out how to groom squirrels. But to people who are actually ‘switched on’, using Facebook is not a waste of company time at all. Used the right way a bit of time on Facebook could be as important as a networking dinner. The clue is in the category, it’s a social networking site. It is for networking! Most bosses are desperate for their staff to be making business connections, meeting the right people and being in the know, so why is Facebook being persecuted?

I admit that when I log in to Facebook I might spend a couple of minutes looking at my friends holiday photos or playing with the latest application, but I will also be browsing industry groups to make connections, I’ll be adding that guy from that company as a Facebook friend so we can easily stay in contact. Facebook allows you to show people what events you’re attending, and anyone who appreciates the power of the web will be posting their event on Facebook to allow people to mingle pre-party. Facebook Groups are no longer just about a bunny with a pancake on it’s head, there are groups for companies, groups for professionals in different industries, groups that allow you to enhance your company. And then there are Facebook Flyers that allow you to market to specific groups.

You could spend half a day achieving nothing on Facebook, but used correctly it’s a powerful business tool. If companies need to monitor staff performance then fine, but to ban them from arguably the most important networking site seems ridiculous. The power of Facebook should be embraced, applications should be built, groups should be created…let’s not just lump it in the same category as Girls Gone Wild without fully understanding what it has to offer.

London is top of the Facebook pile according to the Guardian and the Londonist, 790,615 members and growing everyday.
The strength of Facebook is the ‘utility’ idea.
For the property sector, it is a great opportunity to build on your web presence. Most agents are unaware of how to leverage applications like Facebook. Usually the answer is ‘we don’t have time for that.’

But with so many people using this social network, I would venture it’s imperative to allocate resource to make sure you aren’t left behind as clever agents begin to leverage their brands in the social context. Undiscovered country… but interesting to say the least.