What Is... ActiveRain?

ActiveRain is best described as the real estate industry’s answer to MySpace or FaceBook. Launched in June 2006, ActiveRain is a free networking site for real estate professionals across the United States. Members are categorized by geographic location and create profiles containing a photo, general information regarding specializations, and more. It takes about five minutes to set up a profile and there are over 7,500 profiles in the network with more added daily.
Potential Uses & Impacts on the Real Estate Industry.

ActiveRain

On ActiveRain, members can create a free, immediate Internet presence that is quickly indexed and ranked by search engines. ActiveRain is constantly growing, which translates to a larger network to share ideas and create out-of-area referrals. The site's blogs and forums are also free avenues of communication, allowing members to increase visibility with home buyers and sellers and other agents.ActiveRain is yet another mode of communication for real estate professionals to share information with one another, obtain referrals across the country, and drum up business. Members can e-mail one another, participate in each other’s blogs and add photos of listings or information on niche skills such as home staging and testimonial quotes from customers. The site also features agents based upon a point system, which can further increase exposure to potential customers and other agents. The more points a profile has, the more heavily it will be promoted on the network. Blogging on the site is very active, as members post comments to exchange ideas and information.
Drawbacks.

ActiveRain is primarily targeted towards real estate professionals. Consumers can access the site, but they are more likely to turn elsewhere for assistance in finding a broker to work with. It's great for exchanging ideas and information with other real estate brokers, but according to comments from members in a recent Inman News article, ActiveRain is not an ideal tool for finding new clients.

Jennifer Hazen, November 2006
  

Source: http://www.realtor.org/library/web_intelligence/82

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