I use Skype regularly and it has become a replacement for the home phone (and business phone) for me and my team.

Skype to me is a great success story and its business model is perfect for exponential growth – getting users to reach out to all of their friends to become members and contacts and saving everyone time and money to connect from almost any location.

Skype also reaches out on just about any platform including Mac, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and the like, even set top boxes and DVD players and some televisions.

Yes, this is a big price and Skype does compete with a few of Microsofts products such as Windows Live Messenger, but very few people use this software for making calls.

The Skype software is continually evolving with group conferencing and other additional features, you can call anyone, create group chats, share screens and with add ons even record calls. Skype still has a way to go to be the perfect solution for larger businesses, but all in all I think it is a good deal that only the likes of large unwieldy companies like Microsoft could screw up. (Telstra could too, but thats a whole other story)

What will this mean for the current Skype users and software? I doubt Microsoft would be foolish to make any large changes immediately, they could expand the API for users to connect to other services and could also create advanced screen capturing for giving demos or lessons and publishing those on the web, much like Screenr.com

If Microsoft continue to integrate, innovate and grow the software it could mean the end for many a fixed line Telco worldwide. Microsoft will no doubt expand its integration into many of its products including office but the deal to me is all about stopping Google.

Google Voice
Google Voice operates in the US only at this stage, but this deal should see Google get off its backside and introduce other countries and to Australia and New Zealand sooner rather than later.

With Google Voice you simply create a new phone number and match it with your Mobile Phone number (from a large range of providers). All calls are routed to your existing mobile phone.

The power of Google Voice lies in its messaging and translation. If you miss the call it then translates the voice message into text and SMS’s and/or emails you the translated text, you can also play the message from your phone or through a browser on your connected device/desktop.

The transcription is not always accurate, but you get the gist of most messages by just the reading the translated text.

In the US I use Google Voice for all of my SMS messaging and it plays beautifully with Email, SMS, Browsers and is supported on all iPhone, iPad and Android Devices.

All in all a good fit and smart move by Microsoft, let’s just see if they stuff it up!

With online solutions its possible for an innovation to rapidly move through each level far quicker than the offline world would allow. Look at the use of Facebook and Twitter in our industry. A little over 18 months ago Twitter and Facebook where only being used by the Innovators and the Early Adopters in our industry. That quickly changed and by the end of 2009 it was being picked up by the Early Majority and today we see the start of the Late Majority joining the party.

So it had me thinking whats going to be the big things of 2011 online for real estate agents and early evidence suggests that three big breakouts to hit the Early Majority for 2011 will be Video, Mobile and Single Property Websites.
To breakout to the majority things generally have to change. There is generally and update or a new technology or something that facilitates the change and for my suggestions there is a change that will facilitate that greater adoption.

Video

Video has been used by real estate agencies for a few years. Online video broke through to the majority with the advancement of broadband internet connections to the home and Youtube is now one of the world’s most popular websites. Despite this video has not reached the same popularity in our industry and has remained a niche product only with the Early Adopters.

So whats going to change? Realestate.com.au is about to launch their video product. Domain were first to the punch last year but realestate.com.au are going to be doing it bigger and better and has gathered the resources and man power from around the country under one banner.

This army of video contractors will provide a consistent product across the country but best of all video will be a main feature of the realestate.com.au portal and will finally come of age in our industry. 2011 will have video written all over it and you can smell it in the air. Every article published on Business 2 so far this year includes something about video.

Mobile

Smartphones and Tablets are becoming hugely popular placing internet access into the palms of the people and they are using it to visit our websites. Over the past couple of years some real estate website providers have offered mobile websites to their clients but till now the concentration has been on making the property pages fit a mobile device and not the whole site.

On our website we are currently receiving an average of over 25 unique visitors every day from mobile devices including ipods, ipads, iphones and android devices. By the end of the year I expect that number to triple or even more as these “smarter” phones and web enabled mobiled devices become more and more popular.
What stood out most though was that the majority of visits were to non-property pages. In fact 75% of visitors came from Google to view a non-property page.

If that is how the public are viewing our websites we as agents need to deliver the best experience to them and start offering mobile friendly versions to those arriving with via mobile devices. More and more agents will create 100% mobile optimised sites.

Single Property Websites

I remember creating a standalone property website from scratch for a client many many years and swearing that I would never do it again. Over the past couple of years templated versions have become popular allow agents to create a standalone website in minutes. They have certainly attracted their fair share of Early Adopters in the industry but have struggled to gain a wider acceptance.

TheHomePage.com.au is one of Australia’s newest free portals and the team is thinking outside of the box with many things they are doing. Along the way the team may have found the magical ingredient that will introduce single property websites to a much wider audience and have called it MyPropertyAddress.com.au. With the previous suppliers there was still a significant investment in time uploading and commissioning the website. Whilst it is no longer measured in hours like my original attempt year ago it is still a significant amount of time especially when you are doing multiple property. When you factor in price changes for all of your property the time invested can still be quite significant.

Because TheHomePage.com.au already receive all of your information as a portal (and if you are not sending your properties to them now, I recommend you should) they can make a single property website with literally a couple of clicks.

The result is a professional website with great SEO benefit back to your main website with very little effort. The site will be constantly updated with absolutely no additional time needed at all.

Here are a couple of examples :- http://84teasdaledrivenerang.com and http://224theesplanadeuminabeach.com.

You can probably expect the current manual style operators scrambling to get hold of an xml feed themselves to replicate the sheer simplicity. You might also see other companies who already receive or send xml property feeds try and tap into this type of product and join the fray. For now though thehomepage’s MyPropertyAddress.com.au is the only one that I know of that has the process as simple as possible

These are for my mind the top 3 solutions that are on the horizon of making the biggest impact for agents online. The real question is though, are you going to be the Early Majority, the Late Majority or one of the Laggards.

All sounds very similar to YouTube right? It is, except you can purchase a VidCall number (USD29 per annum) that you advertise and provide to your audience. With this number your audience can dial it into either of the phone applications and your content will appear. There’s no cost to your audience because the number is not dialed, its simply used as a search tool to pull your content through the internet.

It’s always great to see innovation, especially in the online video segment as this is one of the most popular and fastest growing. However, VidCall are basically competing with Youtube and trying to charge a fee for this. Can they successfully do this? Perhaps, but you need to remember that users can market their  YouTube channel @DoubleBayProperty for free.

Also, there should be a mobile phone website so any phone browser with internet access can view content eg m.youtube.com not just those with an iPhone or Android phone.

In their latest press release, Realestate.com.au have just announced some enhancements to their mobile site…

Henry Ruiz, General Manager Consumer Marketing for realestate.com.au indicated the new mobile website features will allow obsessed property hunters to access important property information, at the touch of a button.

“Given the heightened activity in the property market realestate.com.au’s enhanced mobile site means property seekers can now access open for inspection and auction times in chronological order while on the go, so they can maximise the time spent on the property hunt,” he said.

“The site even allows house hunters to save notes on properties to their mobile and then access that information via their myrealestate account from their computer later on,” said Henry.

Since launching the mobile website in early 2009, realestate.com.au has experienced significant growth in traffic, up by 213 per cent⁽²⁾ during a 12 month period.

“We have had a phenomenal response since launching to market last year with a high proportion (73.6 per cent) ⁽³⁾ of our users accessing the mobile website site via an iPhone handset,” said Henry.

“Our data indicates consumers using our mobile site prefer to call an agent directly from their mobile rather than sending an email. In fact 71.3 per cent⁽⁴⁾ clicked to call an agent directly, reinforcing the high level of engagement and immediacy in response wanted by property hunters,” he said.

Other benefits of the mobile site include the new find an agent feature and ability to share property information via popular social networking channels such as Facebook, MySpace, Delicious and Twitter.

It will be interesting to see how popular the enhanced REA mobile website will be with users.

Mobile visitor traffic is only going to keep increasing as more and more people become used to using their phone for browsing the web.

This upgrade also coincides with Commonwealth Bank’s announcement to provide a mobile solution via CBA Combine Realestate.com.au Data into iPhone Augmented Reality Solution as reported here on Business2 last week by Glenn Batten.

The statistics for the Press Release were based upon:-

(1)     20 per cent of people indicated the ability to view properties via a mobile can help manage the mania of inspecting properties without getting stressed. Source: Independent online survey conducted by Longergan Research of 1,028 respondents for realestate.com.au, March 2010

(2)     213 per cent growth in unique visitors during a 12 month period from April 2009 to March 2010 Source: Omniture Site Catalyst

(3)     73.6 per cent of unique visitors to the realestate.com.au mobile site came from iPhone handsets. Source: Omniture Site Catalyst

(4)     This is based on total leads sent to agents by mobile users. 71.3 per cent of unique visitors clicked to call an agent directly via the realestate.com.au mobile website, rather than those who emailed (28.7 per cent) an agent during the month of March. Source: Omniture Site Catalyst

Move the phone around to locate a property

Augmented Reality is when you combine a live view with a computer generated view in real time. The concept itself will not really be all the new to anybody because you have seen it in the movies and video games for years.

The processing power of handsets has risen dramatically and 1ghz is the current sweet spot. That processing power allows modern smartphones to offer augmented reality in the palm of your hand and real estate is one of those ideal applications for the technology.

The Commonwealth Bank has released what they are claiming as Australia’s first Augmented Reality using data from Realestate.com.au and RPData.com.au.

I am not one to post whole press releases so you can read it in full here although be warned it makes the same tired old claims befitting any technology launch. In one sentence they squeeze “taken to a new level” and a “revolution” with the following paragraph:

“The new iPhone application will take property search to a new level, revolutionising the way home buyers search for a home allowing them to make smarter property decisions with virtual reality insight in to any Australian home anywhere, anytime.”

One of these days somebody will put out a release thats says, “hey what we are about to launch is not new, some others beat us to it but we reckon its cool and that our version is heaps better and we hope you like it”.

We first discussed Augmented Reality back in June last year when the Layar program was released which is now available for Android and the iPhone. Layar allowed third parties to easily creating an AR solution by providing “layers” of data that could be accessed through the program. Using Layar there have been other AR solutions serving up Australian real estate but because of their data sources they have only ever offered a fraction of the available properties.

Property found! Click on the screen for more information

The CBA’s solution will be the first dedicated application for the task and this means it can bring a functionality to the handset that a Layar solution cannot. Of course access to the realestate.com.au listing data to drive the site means it only rival for sheer coverage is realestate.com.au’s own mobile site.

The application will initially be a strictly an iPhone application however an Android application is apparently on the banks radar for future development. I thought the use of the term quite entertaining because when you use an AR application it is very much like sweeping the area with your own personal radar to discover whats out there. In this case property information.

Smartphones use an internal gps and digital compass to know exactly where it is in the world at any given time. It can even tell which way it is tilted and where it is facing. It’s this ”awareness” of it’s exact location in 3 dimensional space that makes makes Augmented Reality possible.

The application will allow you to point your phone at any existing property currently for sale and it will overlay information on the property over the top such as price, bedrooms, bathrooms, car accommodation, photos and land size.

You can even use the application to search for property surrounding you location. Fire up the application and move your phone around and property for sale will flash up on the screen.

You will be able to access last sales information on all properties but it will be limited to a price range only unless it has been sold recently when the accurate sales details will be available. Consumers will of course be able to get the exact past sales details on any property for a fee thanks to the RPData connection.

View full property and information and photos in a few clicks

The program will be available in the Apple App Store sometime in June as they wait for Apple’s official approval.

I would have thought that this sort of solution would have been a better fit for realestate.com.au themselves but the Commonwealth Bank is obviously trying to leverage home loan leads by being right their in the consumers face during the research phase as they look for property.

As you would expect users can click to call a lender or complete a form to get a call from back from the Commonwealth Bank. The application will pull data live from the Realestate.com.au mobile site so I can only assume that it will still add to realestate.com.au property views which they certainly need right now.

Of course when a company release a media release before its actually available it gets a little hard to give a full and proper opinion but it looks the goods from the screenshots and the iPhone certainly has the power to pull it off. All you iPhone users will have to let me know what you think when it launches because I will have to wait till they get around to an Android version.

I reckon the application will be a hit with real estate agents and may get some of the realestate.com.au junkies away from their computer and back out into the community.

The following are some statistics for a Google Mobile Phone search on accommodation. These statistics are gathered from January 1, 2010 until April 29, 2010. I am using these statistics based on the search term Lorne Accommodation. As a comparison I will give the stats for the same search term when a browser searches via their computer.

Mobile Phone Statistics January 1 – April 29

• Mobile Phone – Search term (Lorne accommodation) 594 Impressions*
• Computer – Search term (Lorne accommodation) 68,044 Impressions*

* the amount of times browsers type in the search term

This is a massive difference in how a browser tries to find accommodation in this region.

Below are stats on a real estate agency based in southern Victoria. It shows the amount of visits dating from January 1, 2010 until April 28, 2010. The first row shows how many times people accessed the site using their mobile and the second row show how many visits via the browsers computer.

Real Estate Agent Website Analytics January 1 – April 29

• Mobile – 442 visits, 1770 page views, average time on site 3mins 24secs
• Computer - 19,904 visits, 116,768 page views, average time on site 4mins 26secs

Firstly, I have to confess that I’m in love with the Apple brand. The iPod is one of the best consumer inventions in memory and, from a person that used to feel pretty cool in my teens using a yellow, waterproof Sony Walkman (yes, I pre-date the Sony “Disc”man) it’s amazing how quickly I became reliant on my iPod. I took it everywhere and looked forward to a morning run so I could use it.

As you can imagine, the iPhone blew my mind, and continues to amaze me almost every day. I break into a cold sweat if I forget my iPhone. The iPod and BlackBerry are now gathering dust in the spare room, waiting until I get around to putting them on eBay.

I’m now seriously considering buying a MAC for home. Why? I have no idea. As a marketer I’ve just been sucked into the vortex, and I just want one. Every time I switch on my PC at home I’m secretly hoping that it’s broken so I can justify the new purchase to my fiancée (who I know secretly wants one as well).

So, to the eagerly awaited Australian launch of the iPad. Apple’s website is positioning this product as “A magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price.” I’m a little sceptical.

Really good marketers are masters at finding a gap in a market and creating a product or a service that exploits that gap and fills the void. Exceptional marketers take that one step further and develop a product or service to fill a void that doesn’t even exist, and then create the gap via clever marketing. Before you know it, nobody can understand how they lived without what you’ve invented.

However, in launching the iPad I wonder if Apple has just got a little carried away. As one of the most powerful brands on the planet are they forcing a product onto us that we just don’t need at all?
Apple is telling us that you can conveniently; surf the web, watch videos, download and use apps, flick through photos, manage your diary and emails. All of these things you can do on your MacBook and iPhone. I struggle to see why you would buy this product if you already have the iPhone, and particularly if you also own a MacBook (Apple speak for a laptop).

Will this product revolutionise the way that we consume information and, in turn, how we do business in the real estate sector?

Here are some ideas on how the product “could” be used:

1. Listing Presentations. Laptops can be a little intimidating in the lounge room, some agents suggest that they can create a barrier between the prospective vendor and the agent. Maybe a touch screen tablet will soften that a little.

2. Property Searches. Some of our offices have MACS in reception, enabling the public to drop in and browse our website. The novelty of using iPads could work well.

3. Capturing Information at Open Homes. With the right software (that plugs directly into you database) it would be pretty handy to record not just buyer details, but buyer feedback on an iPad during open homes.

I’m still a sceptic, but I’ll let you know when I’ve bought one (which will probably be early May by the way).

Whilst a lot of these things I mentioned can already be done using a laptop, with the recent launch of the Apple iPad and the low entry price for their product, I can see that there will be a large number of potential uses for the iPad for real estate agents.

Just like a restaurant could use the iPad for taking orders or displaying their menu, real estate agents can use the iPad to demonstrate how professionally they can present a potential sellers home, show comparable sales and create a marketing campaign digitally.

The pricing of the iPad means that Apple have provided an affordable way that an agent can make their company appear more high tech out in the field.

Here’s 10 Ways That Real Estate Agents Could Use The iPad…

• Use it for digital listing presentations

• Show property photos and videos in high definition

• Visit websites for doing CMA’s and show other related sites

• Create a Demo Individual Property Website for a client right before their eyes

• Instant database entry at open homes

• Get directions
  

• Show off real estate iPhone apps on a larger screen
  

• Portable client management

• Show details of current listings to buyers on the run

• Checking email enquiries & setting appointments

The launch of the iPad also provides an insight into where Print Media is heading. The iPad is going to make it a better reading experience for people to get their news digitally, which will ultimately have an effect on the physical distribution of printed newspapers.

Local Press may not feel the same affect for a while, but it certainly could have an impact in the amount of physical printed local newspapers distributed long term.

My hope was that the introduction of digital readers like the Apple iPad and Amazon’s Kindle may help to bring the real estate print media prices down to a more affordable level for agents and sellers, but unfortunately it may actually increase.

With the iPad, the newspaper experience will become more engaging, plus the digital newspaper will help to drive more website traffic across to an agent’s website than the printed version ever has. Whilst physical distribution will be down, the electronic distribution of newspapers could explode via the iPad & advertising space will become more popular, hence more expensive.

Whilst I see some great uses for the iPad for real estate agents, there are some developers who feel that Apple could have gone a lot further with their development, eg here’s 8 Things That Suck About The iPad.

I’m sure Apple will include a number of these extra features to the iPad very quickly, just like they did with the iPhone.

But for now it looks like they have made something that is very appealing to the majority of people & have priced it affordably enough that the iPad should end up becoming just as popular as the iPod and the iPhone.

While agents will have to wait to get their hands onto an iPad, over the next few weeks there is a perfect opportunity for agents or franchise groups to prepare a digital listing presentation in time for its delivery.

If you can think of any other uses for the iPad I’d appreciate any other thoughts or ideas.

Disclaimer: I am the director of a company that provides Individual Property Websites for real estate agents.

Remember the iconic 1980s movie ‘Wall Street’ in which Michael Douglas walks along a beach watching the sun rise while talking into his mobile phone? The thing was about as big as his head (which was big), yet was the symbol of power, wealth, technology and cool. Looking back at it now, the device forces a smile, just like those beige box-like floppy drive PCs of the same era.

Fast forward nearly a quarter of a century, and the current generation of mobile phones are really pocket PCs, things that might have impressed Flash Gordon or Captain Kirk in earlier eras. We check our emails, surf the web, listen to music, take pictures, download and pay for apps – from anywhere. It slips into our pocket, we own it, it’s ours. With the iPhone, it’s stylish to be a geek, and if you’re a newcomer to all this, welcome to the party.

A year ago, mobile traffic to web sites, and real estate sites in particular, did not rate. Yet already 23% of Australians with mobiles use them to access the internet, even though total internet traffic is estimated to be less than 1% through a mobile device (ABS). Still early days.

Part of this could be the catch up of consumers, part of this could be the lack of mobile-ready websites and the small number of ‘real estate’ apps in the iphone App Store. A recent search of “real estate” apps turned up only 5 Australian ones (plenty of American), among these a couple of multi-office real estate agencies, and among the main portals only Domain are present.

In the States, Zillow.com were reported as saying up to 35% of their weekend traffic comes from mobile devices. Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia.com, claims (more believably) their mobile traffic is in the “5 to 10% range”, while a year ago “it was negligible”. Although iphones account for only 8% of our mobile devices, 50% of mobile traffic is coming from iphone apps. Realestate.com.au, in Australia, reported “exponential growth” to its mobile site in December (150,000 unique visitors), claiming this to be “additional” traffic.

Whatever the claims and stats being bandied about, it would appear that mobile is going to be the trend of 2010. Social media is “…like, so 2009”.

It makes intuitive sense that mobile traffic should figure more this year – the technology is here, you can be walking down that beach watching the sunrise and getting your real estate fix. There are apps being developed where you point your camera phone at a building and can see which properties are for sale, at what price and what has sold recently. Househunting is an activity that still takes us out and about, checking into home opens, trawling suburbs in our cars, walking down streets. With the mobile in our pocket, do we really need anything else?

So get ready for the upsurge of mobile web designers and iphone app developers. (There will be snake oil salesmen among them.) And with that, the question – do we “mobilise” our web site or get an iphone app developed, or both, or neither? The former allows your site to be accessible on most, if not all net-ready mobiles (much more fiddly to have coded than you might think). The latter allows people to download your app, have it in their menu making it easily accessible. Apps are sexy and cool, great PR spin, but are more expensive to develop. And how do you get YOUR app downloaded, especially when (in say a year or two’s time) there are hundreds of Australian real estate apps in the iStore, rather than 5? This is the brave new world we seem to be moving into.

Photo Credit – Jamie Riddell, http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamieriddell/2166586104/

Both Domain and REA have created mobile phone websites allowing users to search and view property through their mobile phone. However, I’m not aware of any agency websites which have been optimised so property seekers can view the agencies properties through a mobile device. This is all about to change due to a nifty web application called Mohbe.

Mohbe allows real estate agencies in any country to have their own agency branded mobile phone website for all of their property listings. The mobile phone websites are viewable through any mobile phone which has an internet browser and access to the internet.

Mohbe specialise in providing real estate agents with mobile phone property listing websites without the agent having to do anything.

But this isn’t all that Mohbe offers agents and property seekers. What makes this product completely unique are the options available to a property seeker to get the property url into their mobile phone.

Each mobile phone property website has its own unique QR Code and Mohbe tiny url making it easy for property seekers to navigate to through their mobile phone.

Mohbe uses the latest in barcode technology by allocating a QR Code to each property. A property seeker will scan this QR Code using their mobile phone camera which will then automatically load the mobile property page in the phone’s browser. For those users who do not have a camera phone, they can quickly enter the Mohbe tiny property url into their browser eg Mohbe.com/3467. Agents enter their listings into Mohbe either manually through the interface or automatically via xml data feed from their real estate property listing company.

Now this is really cool as it means agents can display these QR Codes in all of their print media eg. Sign boards, newspaper ads, magazine ads, brochures, flyers and even in their window displays. Imagine taking a photo of a QR Code displayed on a property sign board and being able to view a complete virtual tour while your standing on the footpath. It also means agents can display more property listings with less property information reducing the cost of print marketing.

The only shortcoming I see with the application is that although the agent’s logo is included in the mobile property websites, the website is branded with the Mohbe blue which could conflict with some agents branding. I’d really like to see the application allow agencies to choose from a colour pallet, the background colour so it blends better with their agency brand. I also think within the interface they need some kind of summary of listings, accompanied with a way to sort property listings similar to the Domain or REA back-ends.

Putting these small issues aside, Mohbe is an innovative and useful application which should be embraced by the real estate community.

Note: Agentpoint was responsible for the design and development of Mohbe and has an equity ownership stake in it.