Revisiting ActiveRain

By Joel Burslem on Monday, August 21, 2006 Filed Under: Internet

I was reading The Real Estate Tomato’s inteview with ActiveRain CEO Matt Heaton over the weekend and it reminded me that I should probably take another look at the real estate social networking site. I wrote about Active Rain back in June when it launched and, at the time, the site failed to impress me.

Since then however, ActiveRain has enjoyed significant growth - there are now over 3500 individual profiles on the network and it’s growing at a good pace (60-75 new members a day, according to the Tomato). Since its launch, ActiveRain has morphed away from it’s social networking roots and grown into more of a proprietary blogging ecosystem and now enjoys many active bloggers posting on a wide range of interesting topics. It’s great to see such a lively community developing, creating somewhere where new ideas can be shared amongst all members.

If you’re in the business of providing new technology or services to the real estate industry, you’d be wise to start exploring the Active Rain network. Here you have the perfect group of tech-savvy influencers. By engaging the community in the proper fashion (no spam) and by initiating a dialogue with them, you’ll be potentially tapping into the perfect pool of future customer evangelists.

Where ActiveRain continues to fail though, is providing any meaningful information to consumers. But, I suppose that’s ultimately not the point. If ActiveRain can continue building out its product and services to support the Realtors and can provide advertisers with a unobtrusive way to reach them, they’ll have a hit on their hands regardless.

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4 Comment(s)

Jim Cronin | Aug 21, 2006 | Reply

Not sure if you noticed (you did, I know… you have that real estate blogger’s omnicience) but Matt was quick to point out your piece on revisiting the Rain.

And I love the new look.
I have been thinking that it was time for a bit of a makeover. Looks FN awesome.
Craig Schiller | Aug 22, 2006 | Reply

Joel,

I’m glad you are taking another look at Active Rain. It really is quite a unique… and the odd thing is is that you can “feel” the community that is being built.

What I think the consumer can get is tons of info… and more importantly if they are lookin at using any of the professionals that blog on AR… they can learn a bit of the “back-story” of the person. Not just a canned marketing message that is typically found in most website info.
Maureen Francis | Sep 12, 2006 | Reply

I’ve been blogging on ActiveRain for about one month, and I have to tell you, it has revived my interest in blogging, and inspired me to take my consumer oriented blog to a different level. I am extrememly impressed by Matt and his team.

And thank you for linking to one of my posts under the word “topics.” I would have liked the adjoining “interesting” but since I at least I am in close proximity…
Jim Lee | Nov 25, 2006 | Reply

Re: Active Rain (www.ActiveRain.com)

“Profiles in Network: 9,679″

Can 9,679 real estate related ‘members’, who most all appear to having a good time, be wrong???