Prudential Real Estate and Relocation Services has launched a collaborative, virtual research and development laboratory dubbed PRECIPT, the Prudential Real Estate Collaborative Innovation Partnership.

The non-traditional lab is a combination of three facets: innovation, research and development, and collaboration between IT experts and real estate professionals. This virtual lab will focus on four areas: video gaming and sensory spaces, social networking and media sharing, mobile computing, and the application of semantic Web search engines research.

Prudential is partnering with virtual world developer Immersive Design Studio to create one of its top priorities, an immersive virtual tour.

"This is actually 'Avatar' meets real estate. We demonstrated ... how (two people) could both be in different rooms at opposite ends of the country and be holographically next to each other. Buyers can start to experience homes and what they would do with (a home) even before they actually see it," chairman and CEO Jim Mallozzi said.

In addition, the Prudential Real Estate Network is unveiling other tools and resources: a media center to help real estate professionals create listings presentations quickly and easily from one spot, a rent-to-own calculator for consumers, upgrades to the company's proprietary Online Seller Advantage(SM) customer-contact platform, including direct interface with more than 200 social media sites, and their mobile solution, PruRE.com.

Read more from Inman News or in the press release.

Posted in Internet Marketing, Real Estate Industry Trends, Lead Generation, Technology And YOU, Web 2.0 Marketing, National News

Google has been developing new technology to crawl and index websites faster, a new publishing/subscribing protocol they've called PubSubHubbub.

Pub stands for the publishers, Sub the subscribers, and the Hubbub is the communication hub through which both communicate online. Right now when publishers put up new content, a ping, or signal, goes out to the Web crawlers to show there is new content. The PubSubHubbub technology would eliminate the need for a ping, thus shortening the time, most likely in an attempt to keep up with the pace of social media tools.

While the PubSubHubbub system won't increase your rankings in search engine results per se, it will see your content is found faster by the indexing service. Having good content is key to increasing your rankings.

Read more from Gahlord Dewald on Inman News.

Posted in Internet Marketing, Technology And YOU

Real estate technology company Roost has launched a free beta version of its new Facebook application, Social Real Estate℠.

With the app, real estate agents and brokers can now place a "Real Estate" tab on their Facebook page that displays city-specific housing from Altos Research, school information from Education.com and walkability data from Walk Score™.

In coming months, the full version of the app will be released and will include MLS, plus lead generation and drip marketing tools for agents and brokers.

"Facebook has passed 400 million users and is arguably second only to Google in mass consumer engagement, but most real estate brokers and agents struggle to use the platform effectively. Our application solves that problem by delivering content consumers want and engagement tools real estate agents need within Facebook itself," said Alex Chang, CEO of Roost.

Read more in the press release from Roost.com.

photo credit: CoreyHarris

Posted in Internet Marketing, MLS, Real Estate Industry, Lead Generation, Technology And YOU, Web 2.0 Marketing

One of the most astonishing statistics relayed by Vanessa Fox at this year's Real Estate Connect conference in New York that two-thirds of all Web visits are generated from offline resources. Most people use the Internet to find information, but when it boils down to it, trust and connection are still the two critical factors for clients who are choosing agents.

Building trust takes meeting face-to-face, being genuine and connecting with a client on a more personal level. More than half of all buyers in 2009 used an agent with whom they had a previous relationship or were referred to the agent by someone they trusted.

How does building trust and long-term clients fit in with social media technology?

Bernice Ross at Inman News gives more facts and insight about building trust and clients for life, including how to capitalize on using social media to engage people with whom you have common interest: Meetup, Facebook and Foursquare. Those who are active on social networks are actually looking to interact with others, making it more effective in some ways than traditional prospecting.

Read Ross' entire post on Inman News here.

Posted in Internet Marketing, Real Estate Industry Trends, Lead Generation, Technology And YOU, Web 2.0 Marketing

In this 2008 video from Inman News, Personive's Jack Horton explains how to manage your online personas and identities to successfully form relationships and engage your clients so they trust and listen to you.

View the original post on Inman News.

Posted in Internet Marketing, Technology And YOU, Web 2.0 Marketing