If you look on the right sidebar, you’ll see that I’m a ‘Local Ambassador’ for the SF based Real Estate search site Trulia. Basically this means that every now and then, I take some time to answer questions from home buyers and sellers on Trulia Voices.
I used to really enjoy doing it, but over the past few months not so much.
First, agent to agent talk started increasing and taking over a forum that was supposed to focus on RE professionals answering questions posed by consumers. While this diluted the purpose of the forum, I wasn’t too worried that it would completely change the dynamics of the forum for the worse.
One thing that DID start to bug me, and many agent contributers that I talk to, was that I didn’t feel like I was getting anything in return from taking the time to give well thought out answers and that many of the professionals were giving shoddy, spammy answers.
Although I haven’t heard directly that someone wanted to work with me after reading my voices answers, I believe that my answers are contributing to my professional online reputation and they’ve also given us a voucher for a free months worth of featured placements for our listings in return for participating. (which I’ve still got to get around to using). For these reasons, I’ve decided to give them a pass on the ROI thing for the time being.
My real gripe with Voices in it’s current form, is with the pervasiveness of the anti-REALTOR sentiment and overall vibe of the forum. More often than not, I’ve left the place feeling dirty and used and that’s not going to work for me if I’m going to continue contributing to Voices. I’m not sure how to deal with this problem, and I know that the Trulians are probably actively searching for ways to fix it, but it’s not going to go away without them taking some sort of action.
Today, Trulia decided to cordon off an area for agents to speak to other agents directly, and called it Agent2Agent. This should help define the conversation a bit and also means that agents no longer will be acting outside the guidelines by engaging each other instead of the consumer.
Greg thinks this means that they’re gunning for ActiveRain. I’m not so sure about that and agree with Dustin that they’re doing this to segregate the conversation, which I think that it will help do.
Hopefully the changes that they announced today will mark the start of the turnaround and hope that more changes are in store.
I’d love to start to visiting again without feeling like I have to take a shower afterwards.
3 Comments
Write a Comment»It would appear that I share your sentiments about Trulia Voices. I think that much of this stems from the motivation of many of the consumers searching for property on Trulia are doing so specifically to avoid real estate professionals. Even when they use the forum to ask questions, they are predisposed to be wary of the answers of agents. Unfortunately, many of the agents to little to change that attitude with their answers. It is good to have professionals like you on there giving well-thought genuine answers.
We’ll see how Agent-2-Agent changes the atmosphere over at Trulia. . .
I agree that I think this will have little, if any affect, on ActiveRain. I share your frustrations with the Trulia Voices though. It would be nice to have a forum where ‘real’ consumers ask ‘real’ questions, and only ‘true’ professionals can respond with ‘truthful’ professional answers.
The main purpose of Trulia Voices is to allow consumers to get in touch with Real Estate professionals to discuss matters that are of interest to them and get advice. On the flip side Trulia Voices is a great way for agents to actively interact with consumers who are interested in home buying or selling for free and for agents to demonstrate their knowledge to the millions of Trulia visitors.
As the community grew, we saw that agents wanted to ask advice, socialize and ask each other questions, we didn’t have a place for them to do that. We responded to the requests from the members, it’s really that simple.
This is just one of the many updates that you will see coming on Trulia Voices on 2008. Stay tuned!
vicky gkiza - trulia voices product manager