Company sites become mobile-friendly
Single Property Sites, an online site that allows real estate professionals to create custom Web sites for each property that they list for sale, today announced the launch of mobile-friendly Web sites.
"Beginning immediately, each property in the … network will have a corresponding mobile Web site, enabling potential buyers to access the listing information from their cell phones or other mobile devices," according to a company announcement. The mobile-formatted sites can be accessed through the site’s typical single-property domain name or through a "mobi" prefix added to the beginning of the domain name. Mobile sites contain the same information as the original sites but are designed to make them more functional on mobile devices, Single Property Sites announced.
J. Lennox Scott, chairman and CEO of John L. Scott Real Estate, also announced the launch of a mobile version of his company’s Web site, www.JohnLScott.com. Now, consumers in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho can search for nearby properties and look up comprehensive listing information on their cellular phone by going to M.JohnLScott.com. The launch of John L. Scott’s mobile site is the first step towards a larger-scale launch with technology partner, Microsoft. Later this year, John L. Scott will be the first real estate company in the nation to roll out Microsoft’s newest Silverlight technology.
Google opens Lively.com, a virtual world
Google has voyaged into the frontier of virtual worlds, this week announcing the launch of Lively.com, which allows users to create and customize virtual rooms and other spaces, create virtual representations of themselves (avatars) and interact with others.
The universe of virtual worlds is growing, notes TechCrunch.com — another virtual world site, Vivaty.com, launched this week. Second Life, another popular virtual world site, has attracted Coldwell Banker (see Inman News) and some Realtor associations (see Inman News) to buy virtual real estate and set up offices for its "residents" to explore. Lively has seen some real estate-related interest already. There is already a room for "Threewide," the name of a real estate technology vendor. And another virtual room at Lively carries the title "Maxsell Real Estate."
Homescape announces deal with Century 21 in Northern California
Homescape, a national real estate search site, today announced an advertising partnership with the Century 21 Northern California Broker Council that will push property listings information from the council’s 62 offices onto the Homescape.com Web site and multiple local newspapers’ sites.
Homescape is a division of Classified Ventures LLC, which is owned by five media companies, including The Washington Post Co. In addition to Homescape, Classified Ventures operates HomeGain.com, Apartments.com and Cars.com. In February, Homescape announced that it had entered into a deal with Realogy to accept about 700,000 property listings from Realogy’s brokerage brands that will also be displayed throughout Homescape’s network of about 140 newspaper real estate sites across the country.
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