MyHouseKey - a Hyperlocal Blogger Cooperative
Gena Riede recently brought some attention to MyHouseKey.org. It's time for a little press release and update...
Mission - a Hyperlocal Blogger Cooperative
MyHouseKey.org is a non-commercial hyperlocal "blogger's cooperative" site that a group of us real estate bloggers decided to set up in late 2006. Its mission is to provide a hyperlocal venue where bloggers could author articles about their cities and neighborhoods. The intent has always been to connect our bloggers with consumers (more specifically, first time home buyers and sellers) searching for local information. Sound familiar? MyHouseKey.org beta launched in January 2, 2007 at about the same time as Localism, and for a few weeks I believe these sites were the only hyperlocal real estate-oriented sites up.
Within a span of FOUR months - various hyperlocal real estate oriented sites launched after MyHouseKey... here's a short list:
| Newly launched hyperlocal real estate site |
Mission |
| Localism |
Connect consumer with real estate agent via local content publication |
| My-Currency.com (related article here ) |
User-generated AVM resource |
| Street Advisor |
User-generated "street"/community data |
| YourStreet |
User-generated content by neighborhood - focusing on their real estate markets |
| Super Listing Site |
Jim Kimmon's beta entree into user-generated content + listings services |
Positioning - a Hyperlocal Blog existing solely for the Benefit of Bloggers
MyHouseKey is an .org. No entity or individual "owns" MHK, and we expected to manage MHK by committees (or better wording, by community) of bloggers. Our original and continued intent has been to (1) provide a venue for hyperlocal content as a supplement lead and traffic source connecting consumers with bloggers, (2) provide a venue for the testing of the latest widget gadgetry, (3) provide a venue for the testing of any technology or marketing ideas for the benefit of our member bloggers. We assumed our community of bloggers would self regulate any ideas that would potentially create commercial conflicts of interest, similar to how Active Rain provides a similar checks and balances.
Management - think of MyHouseKey as a volunteer organization
We thought MyHouseKey was a great idea at the time - managed by volunteer bloggers and "sponsored" now by RSSPieces. who developed the multiuser blog platform and has dedicated their precious resources to the project. We expected MHK, like Active Rain, to be self running as a blogsite, and for the most part that has been true. Props should also be given to Kevin Boer, who performed a lot of the backend work, our other initial committee members - the Sellsius guys, Mike Simonsen and Greg Swann, and, one more time, especially RSSPieces. Also a heavy dose of appreciation to all our beta posters, who have been quite supportive along this journey.
History - MHK has been a test so far
We started beta testing MHK in January 2007 by saying Happy New Year to about 50 bloggers and asking them to check out MHK, post a few articles if they wanted to and gear up for a more official launch later. (The original invitation letter is posted at Gena's AR site). After the beta launch, several platform problems appeared and, the committee decided to migrate the MHK platform to RSSPieces in early February. The work of data migration was more complex than expected - an example is the reassigning of authorships. Since MHK was managed by only a few volunteers, the project frankly went into backburner status. Today, with work on only a few more authorship issues, MHK can be up and running once more.
Future
So much has happened to Real Estate 2.0 in the span of only four months between January 2 and May 5... it's mind boggling that hyperlocal content has already seeped into blogger consciousness as a given, as status quo... this was not the case even only five months ago.
Please contact me if you're interested in a membership to post articles - we'll get you a login and password. Also chime in on what you think may be the best direction for MHK, or ideas you may have. After all, our core mission has been to serve the real estate blogging community and you could easily be a leader if you have an idea that resonates...
Pardons
We know there are more tiny bugs out there on MHK, our apologies... let us know and we'll fix them...
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Permalink 1969-12-31 @ 7.00:00 pm
