SAN FRANCISCO — A new social media application for real estate debuts today, offering real estate agents another place on the Internet to strut their local knowledge.
SpotIt, which comes from a partnership between one of the largest real estate brokerage companies — Coldwell Banker Real Estate — and local data provider OnBoard LLC, enters a crowded space of online offerings that hope to catch user-generated content about local places and happenings.
What’s different is that SpotIt represents the first such venture to partner with a major real estate brand, and the data will eventually be presented to consumers at ColdwellBanker.com.
Coldwell Banker’s 112,000 sales associates will have the chance to “showcase their community knowledge by populating the SpotIt database with ratings of their favorite neighborhoods and area amenities, including restaurants, shopping destinations and movie theaters,” according to an announcement of the debut.
“Once we collect a suitable amount of useful data, we will integrate the insights into our existing neighborhood amenities section on coldwellbanker.com,” said Charlie young, senior vice president of marketing for Coldwell Real Estate LLC.
The companies are unveiling SpotIt during Inman News’ Real Estate Connect conference in San Francisco this week, where some of the industry’s top entrepreneurs and technology innovators are expected to meet.
SpotIt utilizes OnBoard’s nationwide database of local business listings and invites ratings of local amenities from realty agents. OnBoard has been collecting and distributing local data to companies since 2002.
OnBoard CEO Marc Siden said, “Rather than innovate outside the industry, we decided to remain steadfast in our strategy to build solutions for the industry that would allow real estate companies to meet the needs of online buyers and sellers through their own Web sites.”
