Last fall, we announced that FBS was integrating Docusign with our flexmls Forms system. Though we originally anticipated the integration would be complete earlier this year, we’re happy to report, along with Docusign, that the integration is now complete and live for our flexmls Forms customers. We have approximately 11,000 flexmls Form customers, and are expanding that user base at a pretty decent rate.
Docusign is an incredibly cool technology that goes well beyond electronic signatures, and allows users to manage and monitor the transaction execution process. Here’s a video that shows the integration:
A few years ago, I wrote a post called Are Listing Portals Like the New York Times or Consumer Reports? The gist of that post was that listing portals without ads supported by real estate professionals might garner interest than advertising supported portals rife with conflicts of interest posed by the ads.
But here’s a new twist on this same theme. Last week, Apple called a press conference to respond to reports of reception problems for its iPhone4 when held in a certain way. During the press conference, Steve Jobs specifically mentioned a report by Consumer Reports as being important in their decision to call the press conference. Quoting a New York Times article, the Signal versus Noise blog pointed out that:
In large measure, the article in Consumer Reports was devastating precisely because the magazine (and its Web site) are not part of the hot-headed digital press. Although Gizmodo and other techie blogs had reached the same conclusions earlier, Consumer Reports made a noise that was heard beyond the Valley because it has a widely respected protocol of testing and old-world credibility. Mr. Jobs acknowledged as much, saying: “We were stunned and upset and embarrassed by the Consumer Reports stuff, and the reason we didn’t say more is because we didn’t know enough.”
In other words, Consumer Reports has credibility. Importantly, Consumer Reports has a subscription model and is ad-free. They’re thriving with that model because consumers value their content.
As the real estate industry deals with a cornucopia of listing portals publishing out-of-date listing information and yet claiming authority as they do, the model of value and authority demonstrated by Consumer Reports something for all the MLSs, brokers and agents out there to consider.
Inman News published a news flash about a partnership between Yahoo! and Zillow on listing ads. In the article, Steve Schultz, head of Yahoo! Real Estate, said part of the reason for the partnership is:
Because listings and advertisements have become so closely intertwined, it makes practical sense for Zillow to also handle for-sale listings feeds, said Steve Schultz, head of Yahoo Real Estate.
“The listing is, in many cases, part of the ad product, so it’s very difficult to separate out the discussion,” Schultz said. “It’s important for clarity for the agent or broker to have one phone number to call to work out issues with their free listing or enhanced listing.”
From the MLS perspective, this quote reminds me of three prior posts here on the FBS Blog:
I continue to think that the real estate industry would benefit from more clearly defining what part of the listing constitutes an advertisement and what doesn’t, because the licensing terms for the two could be quite different, with the former having fewer terms and restrictions than the latter.
