Sylleptic

I participated in a discussion last night about property and web 2.0, sponsored by my friends at Zoomf.com. I presented a personal view of what we mean by web 2.0, and Mike Carter spoke about how it’s impacting the property business here and in the US. We were joined by Andy Etches from Brightsale and Ben Brandt from Rat & Mouse, the popular London property blog. Annie Turner from GoMoNews hosted the conversation and it was a very enjoyable evening.

I never know what to expect from panel discussions. Last night I felt I was involved in a discussion about a rapidly changing business, which isn’t totally sure where it’s going to end up.

Change is inevitable: it’s happened in music, travel, magazine and news media, and it’s happening in TV. The property business faces channel shift and the possibility of dis-intermediation, with people selling their own properties. As Mike pointed out in his comments, hiring a designer to create a brochure-ware website, and signing up with Rightmove, is not a strategy for success in that environment.

Blogging as a method of building trust and community got a lot of attention, prompted by Ben’s personal experiences. These were so interesting I’m planning for him to come into Agency.com to tell us more about them.

Trust is one of the big issues for the property business. If someone has to choose between selling direct or through an agent, they need to feel the agent route is reducing risk at a fair price, and providing a great service. Buying direct has great risks and disadvantages too, but so many of us have had disappointing experiences buying even small things direct on ebay, it seems irrational to leave out the experts in something as big as a property transaction. They have to be trusted and respected if they’re going to succeed, of course.

My presentation (courtesy of Slideshare) is here and there will be a podcast soon, I’m told, at the Zoomf blog.

I set up a t-shirt shop at Spreadshirt to illustrate some of the points I was making about web 2.0. If you’d like one of the t-shirts, you can get one here.