AllThingsD reported that Trulia had acquired startup Movity for an undisclosed amount (the site had received a reported $1.3 million in funding). It was in private beta.
Movity is a kind of “listening” tool for real-estate related and other relevant local conversations. Here are some of the questions that Movity was seeking to answer by capturing unstructured conversations:
- How safe is it?
- Who lives next door?
- How noisy will it be?
- What do locals say?
End goal: Inform home buyers and renters of what the location is REALLY like.
Obviously the fit is very clear with Trulia and the acquisition provides new and potentially unique content to the real estate site.
In an unrelated aside Trulia identified what it regards as the three “success criteria” for hyper-local ads based on its evaluation of the best performing ads on the Trulia site:
- Dynamic ads that feature relevant listings
- Compelling content that caters to the local area
- Increased exposure to ensure repetition
December 21st, 2010 at 1:35 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Greg Sterling. Greg Sterling said: Trulia Buys Movity for Conversations Data http://bit.ly/gTyWEs [...]
December 22nd, 2010 at 4:28 pm
That is both cool looking and intriguing. I signed up to be a beta and would love to give it a shot. Its additionally interesting that Trulia would snatch up something in very early form beta.
Suppose there was a rash of burglaries in a community. It would be interesting to ascertain how this gets “spoken about” and then how it plays out on the web and for property sales. Suppose the same rash of burglaries was performed by one discrete group that was shortly caught and the issue became moot.
Would there be a new set of “comments” Would the old comments leave a negative impact on the community? Would all this information be some sort of overload???
December 22nd, 2010 at 4:32 pm
Agree it’s interesting. Will be interesting to see what they get and how they present it.
September 21st, 2011 at 9:35 am
I read your blog. I am very happy to heard about “Movity for Conversations Data” but tell me one thing it is safe or not?
September 21st, 2011 at 12:25 pm
Not sure what you mean by “safe.”
November 17th, 2011 at 10:34 am
You have briefly described about “Movity for Conversations Data”. Can you tell me about its impacts?
November 17th, 2011 at 1:18 pm
I don’t know how Trulia is currently using it but it is/was a “social listening” tool that was probably intended to capture data about neighborhoods so that Trulia could offer information about “what people really think” about XYZ area.