Townizen

What kinda company would we be if we weren't on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn? Well...we'd still be a pretty great company, bringing you a pretty awesome suite of FREE real estate marketing tools!

Nonetheless, we've made it super simple for you to follow what we're doing all around the web! Check out the bottom of every page on Townizen (our footer), and easily connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and RSS. While you're at it...we encourage you to connect with each other too on those platforms!

Home buyers & sellers are searching online for professionals to hire, but it's hard know if their search returns reputable results. Townizen provides a clear snapshot of a professional's reputation profile and lets consumers make educated decisions.

Townizen just opened its public beta, and already real estate agents are signing up to get listed on the directory and to use some of its built in online marketing tools.  

“More than ever, consumers are going online to find real estate professionals to work with. But not only to find them, but to research if they are reputable. The process of buying or selling a home is a complex thing, and consumers want to make more educated decisions in choosing professionals to work with”, states Townizen founder, Patrick Cheung. “What Townizen does is help real estate professionals showcase their reputation in four core areas: knowledge, endorsements, connectedness, and activity.”

On the knowledge front, Townizen provides a blog platform to all professional members. The blog platform ties seamlessly into a professional’s public profile page to help consumers guage a professional’s depth of knowledge. To showcase how well endorsed a professional is, Townizen offers an endorsements network to let consumers see a professional’s endorsement level. 

“Connectedness and activity are a bit harder to understand initally…yet may be the most important reputation factors,”  explains Patrick Cheung. “Traditionally, the most effective real estate professionals are those that have deep networks. Consider deciding to hire either agent ‘A’, who has 10 people in their professional network, versus agent ‘B’, who has 100 colleagues in their network comprised of real estate agents, loan officers, appraisers, contractors, etc…the added value of agent ‘B’ becomes very evident. In terms of activity level, do you feel more comfortable  hiring an agent with an experience level of representing 1 listing a month or 12 listings a month? Here at Townizen, our goal is to help professionals showcase themselves more effectively, while giving consumers an opportunity to make more educated decisions.” 

About Townizen.com

Townizen is committed to helping real estate professionals be proactive in today’s social web, by providing online marketing tools that is social, simple, and free. Its core mission is to help professionals stay up-to-date, relevant, and proactive in today’s social web. For more information, visit www.townizen.com.

 

 

Townizen.com to provide free web technology for real estate professionals

Townizen offers a bit of relief to the real estate market by giving real estate professionals online marketing tools…for free. The company is committed to helping real estate professionals be proactive in today’s social web by taking the complexity and cost out of online real estate technology. 

Irvine, CA (PRWEB) February 26, 2009 – Townizen has opened its public beta, poised to become the Facebook for real estate professionals. Real estate professionals currently use multiple marketing tools from various vendors to get tasks done online (e.g. single property websites, realtor websites, listings platforms, property flyer generators, email campaigners, blogospheres, etc); Townizen provides all of these services under one platform…for free. Townizen is committed to helping realestate professionals get productive and proactive online by giving away these real estate marketing tools for free and making it simple to use. 

 

“Agents shouldn’t be paying what they’re paying for today’s outdated real estate technology. Our mission is to provide technology that is relevant, pleasant, and free”, states Townizen founder, Patrick Cheung. Real estate agents are currently paying hundreds of dollars a year in technology costs. Townizen wants to help agents wipe out this expense. 

 

One of advantages of Townizen is its social network. Many of the online real estate tools currently on the market are all working in a vacuum, existing independently from each other. However, many of these products are intrinsically meant to be shared, and would find extraordinary benefits if they were shared on a social network. 

 

“We’ve learned a lot from social networks in the past several years. One of the first things we learned is how effective it is for connecting people. More recently, companies have embraced it as an excellent vehicle for marketing. A more subtle trend now is how effective social networks are for business productivity,” observed Patrick Cheung. “The real estate supply chain is all about connections. With Townizen, we want to help professionals take advantage of all three social networking benefits: connecting, marketing, and increased productivity. It’s critical that real estate professionals understand their role in today’s social web.” For more information, visit www.townizen.com.

 

About Townizen.com

Townizen is a social network and technology provider for residential real estate professionals. The company is committed to helping real estate professionals be proactive in today’s social web, by providing online marketing tools that is social, simple, and free. Its core mission is to help professionals stay up-to-date, relevant, and proactive in today’s social web. For more information, visit www.townizen.com.

 

Contact

Patrick Cheung

www.townizen.com

Townizen just launched its public beta...so now ALL real estate professionals can JOIN this fast growing social network...for FREE! No more special passwords, secret handshakes, or encrypted codes needed. Just go through our simple sign up process and you can get the full benefits of Townizen immediately!

Currently, Townizen is quickly growing as a social network and as a real estate professionals directory. Join Townizen now to get connected with the community, and tell your colleagues to connect with you on Townizen so you can start building your professional network. Also, get listed on our professionals directory for FREE so that potential clients can find you. 

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Townizen is a social network and technology provider for residential real estate professionals. The company is committed to providing the real estate industry with online marketing tools that is social, simple, and free. Its core mission is to help professionals stay up-to-date, relevant, and proactive in todays social web.

Stay tuned! We're already working on our 2nd generation email flyer feature! We're committed to helping Real Estate Professionals get productive online, and this new feature will really help Townizen members easily promote their business, listings, and services. 

It's already in the works and will be coming out in the coming weeks. Stay tuned and we will definitely announce the new feature once it's out. 

Check out our new Townizen introduction video below! We will be featuring this video on our home page to help users get a better grasp of what Townizen offers. 

But still, the best way to really understand what Townizen offers is just to start using the features, invite friends into your network, and to help get people excited about the community! Remember to get your colleagues and fellow professionals to join Townizen and show them this video.

 

Ok...to ring in the new year, Townizen officially launches it's Private Beta!

Due to recent high demand, we're making this a Private Beta launch (meaning, special password required to sign up). For the initial launch period, we want to control the number of people joining Townizen, and to make sure everyone is having a good user experience on Townizen. 

There's a lot of crazy developments around here, so look for more and more great stuff on Townizen. We're working around the clock to make this the BEST technology platform for real estate professionals. 

Getting the special password is easy, just email support@townizen.com for the special password. We're allowing special access in batches of 100, so get your password now so you don't have to wait too long for the next batch. There's something special brewing here...so make sure you join early!

In the spirit of the holidays, we're giving away 20 limited edition Townizen Travel Mugs...for FREE! 

Here's what you need to do:

  1. Invite 7 real estate professionals (your colleagues) to join Townizen. 

  2. Add them as a friend on Townizen.

  3. Email us at support@townizen.com to notify us that you have 7 Townizen friends. 

  4. If you are the first 20 Townizen members to do this...we send you a limited edition Townizen Travel Mug for FREE!

 

We're working on some exciting new features in the coming months to really help real estate professionals ROCK online...so become an early adopter and join Townizen now!

The Pain

A LOT of us are getting into online video...and many of us want to show them off on our blogs, our websites, etc. Whether our videos are for property walk-throughs, general information, or personal enjoyment...it's evident that the power of online videos will be increasingly important to our professional and social lives. 

But currently, it's still somewhat challenging showing off high definition (HD - 720p) video online. It's pretty costly to serve HD videos (due to high bandwidth and high file sizes), and not many providers are offering this service for free. Some offer HD free, but they only let you embed the lower quality version while making you go back to their website to view the HD version (somewhat inconvenient for your web visitors). For example, Vimeo, a great service for providing HD video, only lets you embed low quality video...but you have an option to pay for a premium account to embed HD video. 

The Cure!

Fortunately for us, YouTube has recently decided to offer HD...and there's a way (a hack really) to embed that HD video anywhere you want! Actually, they only quietly released this feature, and has not really officially supported it...but with a simple hack, it works! As you can see below, I've posted a normal quality version and an HD version...and the differences are remarkable! 

Tutorial

It's a pretty simple hack. All you need to do is add this code --> ;&ap=%2526fmt%3D22 to the end of your embed code. For example:

My Original Embed Code Is:

<object width="480" height="295"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zfc-30EqjPs&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zfc-30EqjPs&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object>

My New Embed Code (With Hack) Is:

<object width="480" height="295"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zfc-30EqjPs&hl=en&fs=1;&ap=%2526fmt%3D22"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zfc-30EqjPs&hl=en&fs=1;&ap=%2526fmt%3D22" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object>

Pretty simple! Of course, keep in mind that you can only embed HD video if the original video that you uploaded to YouTube was in HD! 

The Pepsi Challenge

Notice the BIG difference...you can be the judge!

Normal Embed (No Hack)

HD Embed (With Hack)

 

The Facts and Figures

In a recent study, it's found that more than 75% of homebuyers searched online for their home before purchasing their home. I have to repeat, 75%...and most likely growing! The general public are now armed with the power to search listings themselves, and getting more and more selective about their decisions. No longer is the open house the original point of contact, it's the online listing that buyers FIRST meet. So, we spend thousands on home staging to give a great first impression...what type of impression are you giving with your online listing?

First Impressions are Everything!

I've learned a lot from being an active member of Ebay. If you're selling an item, the more pictures you show off, the more personal a description you write, and then add a video...the more likely you are to get a great sales price on your item. It's about giving off a great first impression and creating an emotional bond with the buyer.

The same goes for your home listings. Presented with more abundant choices than ever, the goal of the online listing is to create an emotional bond with the potential buyer. Your mission is to entice the buyer to actually schedule a home viewing based on your online listing.

The Typical Listing - Today

Here's a little exercise. Take a look at your current MLS/IDX based listing online (see typical listing example below). Would this listing entice potential buyers to schedule a viewing? Does this listing do justice to the property? Is there anything you can do to show off that property better?

 

The Solution

Here are the things you want to look for in a listing platform to REALLY show off your listing:

- Photo Gallery (Supporting Big Pictures): Nothing creates a bond more than lots of big pictures! 

- Video: Video is more popular than ever. Make sure your listing platform supports you embedding your videos. 

- Walkthrough: Buyers love it when you can describe a home room by room with relevant pictures. 

- Relevant Descriptions: Parcel numbers? MLS numbers? MLS sources? Don't confuse buyers, give them well-crafted relevant information about the property

- Map Mashup: Make sure you're putting your property on an interactive map!