I’ll be moderating the MLS panels at Inman Connect NY in January, One of the sessions outlined so far is “Breaking Data Taboos for Fun and Profit.” The idea for this session stemmed from the Connect Create session at Inman SF this last summer, where developers from two companies built two applications in 48 hours and then showed them off at the end of the conference. One of those applications was an agent rating service built by Diverse Solutions using some data from SoCal MLS.
During the demo of that product, Diverse’s President Justin Lajoie commented that he wasn’t sure if the product would ever see the light of day because MLSs would have to grant permission to use the sold data in this way. Brian Boero asked the brokers and agents in the audience if this was a product they’d like to see become real, and the response was definite: Yes, they would.
The question raised was pretty clear: How can MLSs better leverage the kind of rapid innovation available today? One potential answer is to create an API for the MLS data that’s easy to use and understand, especially the terms of use. Currently, the only terms of use for MLS data that are widely adopted by MLSs are IDX and VOW policies. Are those enough? Or could brokers and MLSs create more innovation by developing a new terms of use targeted at specific data sets?
For example, two potential use cases come to mind: (1) syndication or advertising of listings; and (2) aggregate statistical reports. In the case of syndication, the terms of use would focus on the limited set of data needed for advertising the listing and would include an opt-in from the listing broker. Having a standard API for syndication could increase the quality of listing advertising on the web and increase competition among aggregation sites.
In the case of aggregate statistical reports, the terms of use could focus on limiting use of the data for analysis and reporting in the aggregate as opposed to disclosing individual listings. Would a more limited terms of use focused on the aggregate instead of specific listings make it less threatening to brokers to open up the data to new and innovative uses? Are there any terms of use that would be able to be widely adopted or will MLS data use always be limited to policies like IDX and VOW?
Of course, these discussions do not happen in a vacuum. Just yesterday, Google made it easier to see real estate listings on their maps and they’re encouraging real estate professionals to post their listings to Google. Of course, Google has their own terms of use for posting information to their site. We also know that companies like RealBird are using Google Base as an alternative source for listing data, using Google’s API as a round-about way to get at the MLS data.
Is it time for MLSs to leverage the rapid innovation cycle by creating their own API? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below and also at Inman Connect NY.
I’m excited that Bill Chee will be one of the presenters during the MLS Track at Inman Connect on August 6. The topic will be “From Listing Data to People Data: The Next Challenge in VOWs and MLS Consumer Sites”. In preparing for the sessions, I watched Bill’s 1993 (yes, 1993) “Lions Over The Hill Speech”, which, thankfully, NAR has archived and made available on the web.
Watching the video in retrospect, sixteen years later, is fascinating and instructive. This speech pre-dated Realtor.com, Google, and all the other recent lions. If my memory serves me correctly, the initiative approved here resulted in RIN and ultimately Realtor.com, the most popular real estate search portal on the web today. Interestingly enough, there are some new “lions” over the hill today on that top 10 list, and Google is seen as the biggest lion of all.
One of the key questions I’ll have for Bill Chee at the Inman conference is whether listing data really is a non-issue today because it’s everywhere, or whether opportunities remain to leverage the data quality from the MLS for consumer benefit through VOWs and IDX. Bill said recently at the MLS Connection conference in Portland that “people data” is the key today, and I’m very excited to learn more about how that fits into the site he’s created at Prudential Locations and how that helps him provide better service to his customers.
In my recent post describing the MLS track at Inman Connect on August 6, I wrote that “the future of MLS has a lot more to do with people data than listing data.” In fact, all the MLS sessions at Inman this year will touch on this movement in focus “from listing data to people data.” Importantly, this trend isn’t just related to MLSs or real estate.
Wired recently posted an article describing the “full-blown battle” between Facebook and Google “over the future of the Internet.” The article posits that Facebook is collecting a vast trove of data — people data — behind their walled garden, far away from Google’s search engines:
Hardly any of Wayne’s Facebook information turns up on a Google search, because all of it, along with similar details about the other 200 million Facebook users, exists on the social network’s roughly 40,000 servers. Together, this data comprises a mammoth amount of activity, almost a second Internet. By Facebook’s estimates, every month users share 4 billion pieces of information—news stories, status updates, birthday wishes, and so on. They also upload 850 million photos and 8 million videos. But anyone wanting to access that stuff must go through Facebook; the social network treats it all as proprietary data, largely shielding it from Google’s crawlers. Except for the mostly cursory information that users choose to make public, what happens on Facebook’s servers stays on Facebook’s servers. That represents a massive and fast-growing blind spot for Google, whose long-stated goal is to “organize the world’s information.”
In addition to having so much information tied up in Facebook, walled off from Google, the battle also is over how users identify themselves on the web:
Connect and Open Stream don’t just allow users to access their Facebook networks from anywhere online. They also help realize Facebook’s longtime vision of giving users a unique, Web-wide online profile. By linking Web activity to Facebook accounts, they begin to replace the largely anonymous “no one knows you’re a dog” version of online identity with one in which every action is tied to who users really are.
I’ve written before how important the identity issue is for MLSs. Will MLSs step up to the plate and help their members establish an independent identity or will Google and Facebook become the standard for identity on the web for real estate professionals?
The introduction to the Wired article makes a better ending to this post, because it shows that these wars are just being waged now. So much is yet to be decided, and that makes this an exciting time for everyone if we embrace the opportunity.
Today, the Google-Facebook rivalry isn’t just going strong, it has evolved into a full-blown battle over the future of the Internet—its structure, design, and utility. For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google’s algorithms—rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg’s vision, users will query this “social graph” to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire—rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now.
Both Inman News and Brian Larson announced recently some new efforts to create vibrant discussions that could have a big impact on the future of MLS.
Brian has created a new blog called MLS Tesseract, with the goal of “looking for a multi-dimensional conversation on the MLS and organized real estate industries.” Brian’s first few posts are delving into the new VOW policy following the settlement of the NAR/DOJ litigation. A great example is his post 100,000 VOWs by the end of 2010. Backing up Brian’s argument, Jim Duncan recently wrote about the limitations of IDX in his MLS and I commented that a VOW feed could help correct that problem. Brian is one of the smartest people I know when it comes to MLS issues and his new blog could be a great place to advance the future of MLS.
Brian also has created an excellent and exciting resource he’s calling a VOW Clearinghouse. The VOW policy contains a lot of pieces that are going to require interpretation over the years to come and Brian has created an excellent forum for doing that collaboratively. If, indeed, there will be 100,000 VOWs by 2010, then understanding the policy as best we can is critical, so head on over to the VOW Clearinghouse and get to work.
Inman News also posted an editorial today entitled a “Roadmap to Recovery” with one aspect being a new forum on the future MLS. Given our position as an MLS technology company, I found the “technology” branch of their project of most interest:
Technology: New innovations will lead the housing market out of its current mess. The Web brings transparency to the process through the publication of listings, the addition of related information, and through new applications. Core to this new future are better real estate analytics. The market desperately needs better information on the pricing and the sales trends in micro, regional and national markets.
Analytics. Yes, absolutely. Especially the “micro” part. As I wrote a few weeks ago, neighborhoods are difficult but this is a problem that needs to be solved so we can truly embrace the maxim that real estate is local. Standardizing this process will allow better data to be aggregated and indexed and provide more transparency into the true real estate values as opposed to the distorted aggregations that exist today. There is no national or regional real estate market — real estate is local — and we need better data aggregation practices to reflect that. Data aggregation is one of the central purposes of MLS and so I can’t think of a better topic to explore.
I’m excited about these opportunities to engage on-line in an extended discussion about MLS and hope you join in the fun.
