Trulia will provide special training and discounts on the listing portal’s marketing tools to 40,000 members of Lisle, Ill.-based Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED), one of the nation’s largest multiple listing services.

MRED is the first MLS to partner with Trulia in the new “Shared Success Program,” which will provide guidance to agents on how to get the most out of Trulia’s local and mobile ads platforms and suite of membership plans. The program is being marketed to MLSs throughout the country.

“Our goal (with the program) is to help agents better understand Trulia’s free and paid services to help agents and brokers succeed and more effectively use Trulia’s tools to grow their businesses,” said Trulia spokesperson Ginger Wilcox.

In addition to MRED members receiving discounts for Trulia products, they’ll also receive training on how to use both Trulia’s free and paid tools and exclusive training webcasts.

As part of the deal, MRED will also use be able to co-brand training materials including videos, handouts and emails that market Trulia’s tools to its members.

“Trulia is delivering the online and mobile tools to help agents meet the expectations of today’s consumers, and agents who adopt those tools effectively will build a better business,” said Russ Bergeron, CEO of MRED.

MRED is one of several large MLSs that provide listings to Trulia. Others include the Houston Association of Realtors (HAR), Boston-area MLS Property Information Service Inc. (MLSPIN), Bay Area Real Estate Information Services Inc. (BAREIS) in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Connecticut Multiple Listing Service (CTMLS).

Trulia rival Zillow also receives listings directly from some MLSs, including HAR, MLSPIN, CTMLS, and the Corpus Christi Association of Realtors.

Some are noticing that partnerships like this are an indication that the portals and industry are in the beginning stages of figuring out how to work together.

“I tweeted last week from #Clareity that there seemed to be a subtle shift coming from portal bashing toward finding ways to partner and co-exist. MRED seems to be on the leading edge of that with this announcement,” wrote Amy Geddes, chief operating officer of real estate consulting firm Clareity Consulting, in a Facebook post yesterday.

Ron Stephan, CEO of Southeast-based real estate analysis firm Metro Market Trends, agreed.

“If its considered portal bashing to be concerned that some portals have inaccurate, untimely, illegal listings and repurpose MLS and broker data … then consider me a portal basher! Trulia, for one, has come a long way toward cooperation,” Stephan wrote in a comment on Geddes’ Facebook post about MRED and Trulia’s new partnership.

Finding industry partnership for the portals has been a bumpy road. This week, two Trulia execs with longtime industry experience and mandates to build relationships between the portal and the real estate world split ways with the company.

In December, Trulia hired iHomefinder founder Alon Chaver as vice president of industry services.

Zillow has been similarly focused on building relationships in the real estate industry. Last year, it hired prominent real estate broker Jay Thompson and longtime MLS exec Bob Bemis to beef up its industry rep. In January, former NRT LLC exec Chris Crocker joined the team at Zillow.

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Article source: http://www.inman.com/news/2013/03/7/trulia-providing-mred-members-with-training-discounts

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The FINANCIAL — Matterport, a Y Combinator graduate that just raised $5.6 million in
Series A funding to produce a scanner that makes 3D models of interior
spaces more cheaply and much more quickly than before, has a novel
technology opening new possibilities in real estate, remodeling and
construction.

But it also has a classic problem–convincing potential buyers that a new type of product is worth both the money and changing the way they usually do business.

“This is an answer in search of a problem,” said Willy Shih, professor at Harvard Business School specializing in manufacturing and product development. Shih looked at Matterport briefly, at the request of a reporter, and said that he is in general very positive on the technology’s potential, but that the company will need to quickly find customers that will be testing the product and help the company refine it, something that Matterport has already started doing with prototypes.

Matt Bell, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, said that Matterport’s initial customers would be real-estate photographers. “This is the next tool that they will need to have,” he said of the product, which will cost about as much as a good DSLR camera.

But San Francisco Bay Area real-estate photographer Bryce Greenfield, who was told about the technology by a reporter, said, “I don’t think I am interested.” For him, an investment of this kind would only be warranted if real estate agents really started demanding the service, and he’s skeptical of that.

As The Wall Street Journal said, video, for example, never took off even in high-end real estate listings, even though some people thought that the visual capabilities of video reels would be effective marketing tools. “Most agents are very tight with their purse strings,” said Greenfield. He said real-estate marketing has been pretty static for a while, with photographs accompanying listings.

Matterport’s technology is different from video, because it offers precise measurements, and soon enough, the company plans to also offer interactivity, so that besides a virtual walk through a space, one will be able to add and remove objects. The company hopes to first make money by selling the scanners, and then to also lock in monthly subscriptions from users for its service of creating the 3D models and hosting them online.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based Matterport’s scanner incorporates the same sensors used in Microsoft ’s Kinect platform, which runs on the XBox to visualize users’ movements. The device, which is controlled via an Apple iPad, takes several 3D scans of an interior space that are sent to Matterport. The company uses its software algorithms to process all the information and stitch together a full 3D model of the space in minutes.

Matterport will rely on resellers, as well as companies like recently launched Floored that will buy the scanners and create sales channels on their own.

Bell said that the company doesn’t have to sell a huge number of scanners to turn a profit. In a few years, he hopes that the hardware part of the business will go away completely, he said. At that time, he hopes that 3D sensor technology will become small and cheap enough to be incorporated into smartphones and tablets, so the question of an upfront investment will go away, and the company will become a purely software and services provider.

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Article source: http://finchannel.com/Main_News/B_Schools/124704_Matterport%E2%80%99s_3-D_Scanner_Faces_Marketing_Challenge/