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Another YAPC::Europe Come and Gone
Avid readers will note that the Nestoria engineering team attended YAPC::Europe 2008 in Copenhagen a couple of weeks back.  As usual, the conference featured many interesting talks, two of which were given by members of the Nestoria team.  Marc Tobias related some of the lessons we have learned building a high-volume / high-performance ETL system [...]

Avid readers will note that the Nestoria engineering team attended YAPC::Europe 2008 in Copenhagen a couple of weeks back.  As usual, the conference featured many interesting talks, two of which were given by members of the Nestoria team.  Marc Tobias related some of the lessons we have learned building a high-volume / high-performance ETL system from scratch.  His talk was very well attended and sparked some interesting discussions about FOSS ETL and Business Intelligence systems.  I (Mike) spoke on a topic of much interest in the Nestoria world - profiling and optimization.  As always in the perl world, there are lots of different tools out there and some are more right for the job than others.  Encouragingly, many of the best packages are relative newcomers - clarly demonstrating that Perl is alive and kicking.  Thanks in particular to Tim Bunce for helping me prepare and for giving me something to talk about.

Conferences are not just about prepared talks, though.  You can sometimes learn a lot more at lunch and during coffee breaks.  Lots of informal discussions lead me to believe that our development team is doing all of the right things, but that we still have a few tricks to learn.  One very notable area of development is distributed applications and cloud computing.  Systems like EC2 and Google App Engine are becoming more and more of a fixture in the technology landscape.  It remains to be seen how we will integrate these new developments into the Nestoria engine (if all all).  There is no doubt that new technologies are presenting many opportunities for building faster, more scalable systems.

Many thanks to the Copenhagen.pm for pulling together an excellent conference.  The waterfront dinner was a particular highlight and perfect example of the high level of organization and style that characterized the entire event.  Also thanks to Marc Tobias for preparing a few notable images from the conference.

Quantity and Quality
Fellow Nestortonians, in your internet wanderings you may have come across long-time property industry expert Bob North’s recent post over at Estate Agency News discussing the comprehensiveness of various property websites (portals and search engines). Bob’s monthly analysis is always interesting, if you’re not a subscriber I recommend you become one. It’s a must read here [...]

Fellow Nestortonians,

in your internet wanderings you may have come across long-time property industry expert Bob North’s recent post over at Estate Agency News discussing the comprehensiveness of various property websites (portals and search engines). Bob’s monthly analysis is always interesting, if you’re not a subscriber I recommend you become one. It’s a must read here at Nestoria HQ.

His attention this month focuses on a seemingly simple question: “How many property listings do the various players have?”. We get asked about this all the time. As we’ve always tried to stress here on the blog in our occasional discussions of Nestoria Rank, comprehensiveness is an important metric, but only one of several, the others being usability, freshness, and of course relevancy. Nevertheless, probably because it seems so easy to measure, comprehensiveness seems to be the metric people fixate on. We think it is given far too much importance, despite having some major weaknesses.

First of all, which listings get counted? We believe users are interested only in relevant results. So, should we count listings that are sold or “sold subject to contract”. Given that we focus on helping individuals find a place to live, should we include commercial properties? We think not, and do our best to exclude such listings from our index. As another example, we often see things like parking spaces listed. Of course people need parking spaces for their cars, we just don’t think they belong in a residential property search engine.

Secondly there’s the question of duplication. Often we have the same listing from multiple sources. Is that one listing or multiple? Another good example is when we see very similar units all in the same building or development. Sure different flats may have slightly different dimensions or prices depending on the view and such, but is a user really seeing many different listings? Or are they seeing one option in their choice of where to live?

Next, there’s the issue of sampling bias. When comparing only one or to areas it’s easy to (knowingly or unknowingly) skew the results.

Finally, of course, comparing search engines and portals is a bit like comparing apples and oranges. The two provide very different user experiences with only marginal overlap.

So in conclusion, yes, as Lenin once said “Quantity has a quality of its own”, and of course having a comprehensive offering is critical. But, as with almost every web metric it’s important to understand the meaning behind the number. Comprehensiveness is easy to misinterpret and even then it’s only one ingredient in the property search recipe. Rest assured dear reader we’ll keep our attention on all aspects of creating a compelling service.

Please let us know what you think of our efforts and how we could do better.

Nestoria Interview - Simon Baker - Property Portal Watch
In this month’s Nestoria interview we have the pleasure of speaking with Simon Baker, author of Property Portal Watch and ex-CEO of REA (owners of major European portals - and Nestoria partners - PropertyFinder and Casa.it, amongst others). He is director of 3eep and Redbubble, and Chairman of Arts Hub. In his free time Simon [...]

In this month’s Nestoria interview we have the pleasure of speaking with Simon Baker, author of Property Portal Watch and ex-CEO of REA (owners of major European portals - and Nestoria partners - PropertyFinder and Casa.it, amongst others). He is director of 3eep and Redbubble, and Chairman of Arts Hub. In his free time Simon also writes MyCEOLife, a blog about the challenges of being a jet setting CEO.

Simon, great that you could make the time to chat with us.

1. What are your goals with Property Portal Watch?

The vision for Property Portal Watch is to create the go to destination for information about property portals around the world. The site will provide overviews, news, analysis, gossip and more on portal sites, the companies that own them and the key people in the industry. The audience we are targeting are the property portals themselves, industry players, analysts, media, investors, as well the agents themselves.

We believe that we can make Property Portal Watch successful by leveraging the in depth knowledge, relationships and experience that helped build the REA Group and as we gain momentum, we plan to offer additional products and services to the market.

2. In many countries in Europe there is a dominant local number one: (Rightmove, ImmobilienScout24, Fotocasa). While at REA you seemed to pursue a multi-country strategy, investing in PropertyFinder and Casa.it. What advantages does a multinational strategy offer?

When I was running the REA Group, it was clear that a multinational strategy had a number of benefits.

First of all, being the market leader in one country can be very profitable, therefore if you are able to purchase or create the market leader in a number of countries, then your long term profitability will increase. Also, by being in multiple countries, you can de-risk the business in terms of single market failure risks. We adopted a portfolio approach to this with countries in established and emerging markets.

Secondly, I believe that there are some benefits that accrue from running multiple sites. These include scale efficiencies in technology (build one and use many times) as well as scale efficiency in marketing - in particular in the offer that you make to an agents and you can say “give me your listings and we can publish them on the UK’s #2 site as well as a network of 10 million home buyers and investors globally”. It provides a clear point of difference to the singe country players.

3. As someone watching different markets around the world what trends do you see emerging? What evolution will we see in the market in the coming 12 months?

There are a number of major trends that I think will occur over the next 12 - 24 months:

Firstly, the professionalisation of the property portal industry will improve. Now what do I mean by professionalism? At the moment there are hundreds of sites out there offering a vast range of advertising products and services to agents. However all the marketing of those portals is based on their owns stats and usually stats that sound big but are meaningless to an agent. Therefore I think that independent online property tracking services will emerge that provide agents with cross portal comparisons of their marketing spend efficiency.

Secondly, as agents understand more about their marketing efficiency (ie where their leads come from) they will redirect more and more of their spend in that direction to the detriment of the papers and to some of the smaller portals.

Thirdly, I also think that the list for fee, pay for upgrade model will faulter as agents struggle with the concept and the sites therefore struggle to make any money. Some will be purchased by the bigger players and integrated into a paid offering.

Finally, in markets where there are a number of paid sites (like the UK) there will be consolidation as financial pressures force traditional foes to talk and merge.

4. What are our thoughts on the innovation in the property search space in the last 1-2 years, particularly in relation to pure aggregators like Nestoria?

The property search space is still in its infancy and I believe that many new models will be tried over the coming years - while some will succeed, most will fail.

The types of innovation I think we will see are:

1) Better and more intuitive interfaces for consumers that really make sure that they get the right search results. This will become more and more important as the number of listings sites have increases.

2) There will be innovations in the underlying advertising models and as agents become more and more web savvy, they will increase their investment in the models that deliver the results. I still think it will be a pay to advertise model - just not sure if it is CPM based (straight advertising) or more pay for performance.

Thanks very much Simon. Interesting views from someone with keen insight and international perspective. As a service that partners with 30+ property portals across Europe, we here at Nestoria very much welcome the move to increased efficiency and rational measurement of marketing spend in the market.

past Nestoria interviews: Tim Youngman, Jesus Encinar, and Ivailo Jordanov.

Nestoria Interview - Brad Inman - Inman News
This month it is our pleasure to speak with Brad Inman, founder of Inman News - the primary source for real estate news in the United States. Inman News also owns the hugely influential industry blog Future of Real Estate Marketing (FoREM) and has organized the leading US industry conference, Inman Connect, for years (note: [...]

This month it is our pleasure to speak with Brad Inman, founder of Inman News - the primary source for real estate news in the United States. Inman News also owns the hugely influential industry blog Future of Real Estate Marketing (FoREM) and has organized the leading US industry conference, Inman Connect, for years (note: Readers may be interested in the guest post I did over at Renthusiast summarizing July’s Inman Connect in San Francisco).

Brad will be in London in a few weeks time (more about this in a separate post later this week) to learn more about the UK market. We invite anyone interested in learning more about selling internationally, current state of the market in the US, and technology innovation in the property industry to join us on the evening of Thursday the 16th of October at the Windmill pub in Mayfair, central London.

Brad, thanks for your time.

1. For the first time your traditional Inman Connect conference this January in New York City will have an international focus - you’ve rebranded it as Global Connect. What are the goals of the conference? Who should attend?

Our focus on global was prompted by the number of folks who came to our San Francisco Connect conference from all over the globe. We also have become more acquainted with a number of innovators from different parts of the world. We are inviting innovators and traditional real estate companies to come to New York. Connect is about connecting those two parts of the industry — new tech companies and older and more established firms. Together, they can change real estate.

2. Inman News and FoREM focus on reporting about technological innovation in the industry. What are the major trends you see emerging in the US?

At this very moment, the market is weighing down everyone. But innovation is occurring in three main areas: mobile devices, search and video. Search has never been more important as the number of listings has exploded all over the world. Video takes listings and makes them come alive, and mobile gives access anywhere, anytime.

3. More and more Europeans are seeing the weak US dollar as a chance to invest in the US market. What opportunities do you see here for European property portals or estate agents?

Indeed, many US brokers are scrambling to find buyers outside of our borders. Accessing buyers and relationships with overseas brokers is a high priority here. However, the economic crunch is now global, so it is not clear how this will play out. One thing is for sure, property values are being punished everywhere.

4. What are our thoughts on the innovation in the property search space in the last 1-2 years, particularly in relation to players like Nestoria?

There are dramatics changes in the property search space. First, new and exciting global databases are coming on the scene as buyers are shopping the world for property. Plus, search is becoming more complex, as buyers and sellers want to better sort their searches and compare and contrast listings. There are many many feature innovations in the search space today including photographs, maps, floor plans and video.

Thanks Brad. I’m looking forward to Global Connect in NYC and more importantly to going deeper into the topic of innovation in the property industry during your upcoming visit to London. We hope to see all of our loyal readers at the Windmill on the 16th. For anyone interested in learning more about the US market I advise registering with Inman News today.

past Nestoria interviews: Simon Baker, Tim Youngman, and Jesus Encinar.

We’re hiring
Fellow Nestorholics! the last few days we’ve witnessed turmoil in the financial markets not seen since the days of the great depression. Sadly it seems 1000’s of jobs will be lost in “the City“, and across the interweb we’re already seeing the calls to quit Canary Wharf and go join a start up. I’m not sure [...]

Fellow Nestorholics!

the last few days we’ve witnessed turmoil in the financial markets not seen since the days of the great depression. Sadly it seems 1000’s of jobs will be lost in “the City“, and across the interweb we’re already seeing the calls to quit Canary Wharf and go join a start up. I’m not sure that’s viable advice for your average trader (not least because of the downgrade in lifestyle - our office is a shithole, and it can sometimes takes forever to find a parking space for the company porsche), but there’s no doubt it will work for some.

In the case of Nestoria we hope it will work for one super star, whether he or she is a City refugee or just someone hungry to learn more about the internet as a business. Our little team is expanding. We’re hiring a full time Traffic Acquisition Analyst. This is a great opportunity to join a motivated, international team that’s passionate about search. Experience is good, enthusiasm is critical.

Of course we’re also always on the lookout for developers - as interns (see what this summer’s crop of interns has been up to, or for the occasional contracting work.

Please get in touch via the instructions on our job site if you’re the one. We look forward to hearing from you.

Celebrate, partcipate: It’s OneWebDay!
Nestoreaderos, Celebrate! Today is OneWebDay: The idea behind OneWebDay is to focus attention on a key internet value (this year, online participation in democracy…) We do try our best to involve our users in our development process - providing you with feedback opportunities whenever possible - every piece of which is read by our Democratic Feedback Monitor. However, OneWebDay [...]

Nestoreaderos, Celebrate!

Today is OneWebDay:

The idea behind OneWebDay is to focus attention on a key internet value (this year, online participation in democracy…)

We do try our best to involve our users in our development process - providing you with feedback opportunities whenever possible - every piece of which is read by our Democratic Feedback Monitor.

However, OneWebDay this year is about more than that - it’s about widening participation on the internet, reaching out especially to developing countries and those less able to access the internet. It’s also about learning and spreading knowledge - have you ever edited a Wikipedia article? Or submitted some geodata to OpenStreetMap or GeoNames. Or worked on an open source software project? Or supported heros of online democracy mySociety? If not, maybe today’s the day to get started.

To read more, feel free to visit the OneWebDay site, or look for a meetup in your locality. For those of us resident in London, there’s a get together planned for 6:30 this evening at Inn 1188.

As always, please feel free to comment below, or send us some feedback (naughty or nice). 

Going viral
Fellow Nestorphiles! One of the biggest challenges we face in offering a compelling property search experience is that on the one hand users like Nestoria for the simple, fast, clean experience, on the other hand, property is inherently a complicated topic with lots of little details. We’ve discussed some of our approaches at addressing this in [...]

Fellow Nestorphiles!

One of the biggest challenges we face in offering a compelling property search experience is that on the one hand users like Nestoria for the simple, fast, clean experience, on the other hand, property is inherently a complicated topic with lots of little details. We’ve discussed some of our approaches at addressing this in the past.

This challenge applies not only to the presentation of the properties and the filers for sorting them, but also to the tools around finding a new home. As we become an increasingly digital society people want their data in more and more formats. For example maybe you want your property search results via geoRSS, or KML or GPX. Or maybe you want to email a Nestoria page to someone you’re house-hunting with. We offer all of these formats and options, but want to find a way to make them available to users who want them without cluttering the experience for everyone else. Likewise some users (but probably only a small percentage) may want to see the OpenStreetMap version of Nestoria

So for some time we’ve been mulling what to do. Yesterday we launched our new “viral/tools panel” on the property search results page. As you can see on this screenshot of property for sale in Sheffield, on the upper right side of search result pages users can now click on the panel to display a host of options for sending results to your friends or bookmarking or alternate formats.

After the click:

Big thanks to the folks behind the Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) library for make this sort of interface tweakery so easy. As always, please let us know what you think. Meanwhile we’ll stay focused on keeping it simple.

Pub meetup with Brad Inman - Thurs. October 16th, the Windmill, Mayfair
Fellow Nestoriaks! As mentioned in our recent interview with Brad Inman, founder and publisher of Inman News is coming to London in a few weeks time to learn more about the UK market. For anyone interested there will be an informal and open-to-all event at the Windmill Pub in Mayfair from 18:00 on Thursday the 16th of [...]

Fellow Nestoriaks!

As mentioned in our recent interview with Brad Inman, founder and publisher of Inman News is coming to London in a few weeks time to learn more about the UK market.

For anyone interested there will be an informal and open-to-all event at the Windmill Pub in Mayfair from 18:00 on Thursday the 16th of October. This isn’t a Nestoria event, it’s just a great chance for anyone interested in learning about the US property market to speak with an industry leader, while also sharing a pint or two with friends from the London online property scene. No need to RSVP, just show up. We look forward to seeing you there.

A bit of background on Brad for those less familiar with the US property scene: Inman News is the most authoritative source of independent real estate news in the United States. It syndicates its content to more than 50,000 newspapers and websites around the world. Real Estate Connect, Inman’s twice-yearly conference, attracts over 1000 top executives from technology and real estate to conferences twice a year in New Year and San Francisco. An entrepreneur, journalist and technology expert, Brad is best known for highly-successful internet content businesses including Homegain.com, an internet lead aggregator which he sold in 2005 to Classified Ventures. He is also the founder of Turnhere.com, a leading provider of low-cost, internet video advertising for small and medium-sized businesses.

See you on the 16th!

MoveBroker listings now live on Nestoria
Fellow Nestorianos! As part of the never-ending goal of bringing you the most comprehensive property search experience possible we’re happy to announce that listings from innovative new property marketing service MoveBroker can now be found on Nestoria. Here’s a screenshot or see for yourself by searching for a flat to rent in SE23. Enjoy the weekend!

Fellow Nestorianos!

As part of the never-ending goal of bringing you the most comprehensive property search experience possible we’re happy to announce that listings from innovative new property marketing service MoveBroker can now be found on Nestoria. Here’s a screenshot or see for yourself by searching for a flat to rent in SE23.

Enjoy the weekend!

Nestoria goes Chrome
Fellow Nestorpeople! As what marketing folk like to call ‘Lead Users’ all of you will no doubt know that our friends over at Google launched a new web browser, known as Chrome, a few days ago. As lovers of all things new we of course dove in and took the new browser for a spin. First of all [...]

Fellow Nestorpeople!

As what marketing folk like to call ‘Lead Users’ all of you will no doubt know that our friends over at Google launched a new web browser, known as Chrome, a few days ago.

As lovers of all things new we of course dove in and took the new browser for a spin.

First of all the pros: Chrome is very fast at page rendering (especially pages like Nestoria results pages with lots of javascript), Chrome is very simple (we love simple) Chrome is opensource, and Chrome has some interesting new features. On the con side of the ledger, Chrome isn’t yet available on linux or Mac and folks are finding all sorts of issues with the T&C’s (the whispers of discomfort about Google’s potential for constant monitoring of user behaviour aren’t getting any quieter). All of this is covered in great detail and with heated debate on the various leading tech blogs.

What we found most interesting about Chrome are the features that allow you as a user to make searching Nestoria even easier. There’s a function called “Omnibox” that allows you to assign keywords to searchengines and search directly from the address bar. So, for example I want to find a property near Holborn in London. I assigned the keyword “n” to nestoria, and then away I go.

All in all, Chrome, still has a few issues, but also has some nice new features and will hopefully push the pace of innovation even more, thus benefiting all of us.

On a final note, of course the next of our regular Browser Share posts will break out Chrome users specifically so you can see how the new entrant is doing.