Digital Marketing and Technological Insight

Finally. That is all I have to say about Zillow. I have been a huge fan of their service ever since they launched in beta, however I always said they lacked the community aspects that to me would seem like a perfect fit for such a website. Thankfully, after raising $57 million in venture capital, they just announced some major changes, including Neighborhood Pages, Zillow Discussions and a new personalized home page.

This is a move that should have been made last year, better later then never I guess? Not exactly, Zillow was forced to play catch-up with competitor Trulia so instead of being a leader they became a follower. Now it is time for Zillow to concentrate on it’s strength - 60 million home valuations and continue down the road of Social Networking.

I just received my invitation to the YourTrumanShow.com Beta - and yes I have invites for anyone who wants one. Your Truman Show (YTS from now on) is a video social networking site based around people sharing stories about themselves. YTS focuses on three thing: 1) uploading and sharing videos 2) finding, tracking and watching other peoples videos 3) allowing users to review, comment and rate videos. Like any other social networking sites, YTS’s success will be based on how quickly people will sign-up and most importantly create content. When you cut through the "storyteller" marketing slang YTS is basically a video sharing site, but the user-interface is very intuitive for not only general visitors but also those providing the content. If you are currently producing a video blog (vlog!) or something similar I definitely suggest giving Your Truman Show a shot.

 

The good people at Gleamd just sent me an invite so now I have invites to share! Gleamd.com is the next, next big thing (we mean it this time). So what is Gleamd? Well I think the below video speaks for itself. I am still playing around with it, when I figure it out I will be sure to pass along what my thoughts are.

Woke up this morning and saw 18 more invites in my Pownce account. Want one? Just post a comment with an email address.

Geni.com, the social networking site that connects users by their genealogy, announced today that they have passed the 5 million mark for profiles. Geni.com, which is still in Beta, launched in mid-January.

"I believe we are reaching a tipping point where each incremental user is more willing to contribute data about his family relationships because so many other people have done so," said David Sacks, CEO of Geni.com. "Our goal is to unite the world in a single family tree, and then help those family members learn about and stay in touch with each other," Sacks said.  

Geni.com is different in a very crowded space, you are building your network by involving family members - each family member then creates a profile and can expand on the "Family Tree". I created my tree back in January and it now contains over 100 people. I see Geni.com as more of a resource then a daily destination, for example you can create profiles for deceased members of your family, which brings people back to add information or to find out more about their family.

Geni.com has also branched (pun intended) to other social networking components like photo sharing, birthday reminders and a family calendar. Geni’s map service allows users to see where their family is located all over the world. I love Geni.com and hope it stays around for a very long time.