There has been so much excitement about the release of widgets that an often asked for feature that came out at the same time has almost been over looked – Video! Subscribers can now add videos from YouTube and blip.tv (support for other video services coming soon).
Simply cut and paste your video URL in the Videos field and the flyer does the rest. Its actually a very nifty feature that generates an attractive thumbnail of your video on the front page of the flyer, which links to the full video on a secondary page. More and more online sellers are using video to help move their products and services. According to the San Jose Mercury more and more real estate professionals, for example, are using free video sites to help them “close the deal.” As always, we appreciate your comments and feedback about this new feature.
It is indeed a sunny day for many real estate professionals. ActiveRain, the leading social networking and blogging service for real estate professionals, now allows you to embed widgets directly into your blog posts! Matt Heaton, President and CEO of ActiveRain, told me yesterday that their new release (which came out today) would indeed support multimedia. This morning I was able to embed a vFlyer Commerce Widget on our ActiveRain blog (Example)!
Note: ActiveRain users - Please follow the instructions as there is small kink in the process that will be ironed out in this evenings release!
Now online sellers can embed their galleries and flyers as widgets on their blogs, websites, social networking sites or directly on marketplaces such as eBay. We have the beta for our first series of commerce widgets.
The widget beta is open to all vFlyer users. Simply log into your account and you will notice the addition of a Widget tab. Just like flyers, you can create widgets using the drop down at the bottom of the page. There are currently two (2) types of widgets: gallery widgets (which show the entire contents of your gallery) and flyer widgets (which show all the information pictures associated with a single flyer). We will be announcing additional widget types. In the Widget Editor you will be able to pick a widget style, customize it and then generate the HTML code to embed it in your site or blog.
For more about Commerce Widgets - click here
For more about embedding commerce widgets on other sites -Â click here.
On a very rainy evening at Mistrals in Redwood Shores, California, a group of us gathered for the first Real Estate 2.1 dinner – a casual event I organized for partners, fellow bloggers and other friends of the company to get together. Among other things, we discussed the real estate business, discussed emerging trends and make some interesting predictions for 2007.
The evening had its share of Freudian slips, the best was probably when Kevin Boer asked yours truly if my digital camera had “Redfin†reduction – a feature many realtors would probably pay for! Here are some of the predictions dinner guests made and their favorite movies (the trivia question for the dinner):
Real Estate Predictions for 2007
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Kevin Laws, Co-founder and COO, Vast.com
Favorite Movie: Princess Bride
Prediction: Kevin Boer will have a good year |
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Aaron Sperling, Co-founder and CEO, vFlyer
Favorite Movie: Stripes
Predication: A dozen new real estate sites will spring up giving vFlyer 12 more marketplaces to distribute to! |
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Pat Kitano, Transparent Real Estate
Favorite Movie: Any movie by Martin Scorcese
Prediction: Everyone at the table will become a real estate pundit |
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Oliver Muoto, Co-founder and VP Bus Dev, vFlyer
Favorite Movie: The Matrix
Predication: Mashups will become mainstream! |
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Travis Chow, Founder and CEO, Neighboroo
Favorite Movie: Shrek
Predication: “Real Estate Control Center†dashboards will simplify real estate searches! |
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Pete Flint, Co-founder and CEO, Trulia
Favorite Movie: Austin Powers
Prediction: Trulia will finally get out of beta! |
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Michael Adelberg, Strategic Partner Development Manager, Google
Favorite Movie: Heathers
Prediction: More people will use the Internet in 2007 to search for real estate than they did in 2006 (updated) |
Vote on the prediction you think is most likely
Some Clips From Dinner:
 
 
 
 
Pictures on Flickr   Â
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Rob Scoble of PodTech was kind enough to feature vFlyer on his daily show. Here’s the interview he did with me as well as a demo of vFlyer.
Users logging into their accounts or visiting the site today might have noticed the new live online help link at the upper right hand of the page.
We currently running a pilot to better understand how to continue meeting the support needs of our growing online customer base! Previously, users seeking pre– or post-sales support via email would typically get a response back in less than an hour (during regular business hours) - now they can take advantage of real-time online help. Our goal is to eventually transition the service to support vFlyer Basic, Premium and Professional customers, but until then its available to everyone, so enjoy!
omuoto @ 3:59 pm 
