Sharing A Listing And Social Bookmarking

We've now added a social bookmarking and sharing button from AddThis to each listing. Not only does the button allow viewers to add the listing to over 60 social sites, it also allows the viewer to bookmark, print, and email the listing. The button appears near the bottom of each listing page.

We have also added this Share Button to the right sidebar of this blog. Check it out for yourself. It's over there ======>

OH - Now You Can Tweet Too!

Today we added the capability to "tweet" your own open house listings to a twitter account of your choice. Here is what you need to do:

• Get a twitter account for your open house tweets. If you already have one and want your open houses "tweeted" there you should use your existing account.
  


• Login to your OpenHomez.com account. You'll need to create one if you don't already have one.
  


• Scroll down to the bottom and fill in your Twitter ID and Twitter Password. You'll also need to change the Twitter Mode to "ON" to enable tweeting from OpenHomez.com.
  


• Go to your My Listings page on OpenHomez.com. After each listing you'll see a Twitter icon (). Click on the Twitter icon to tweet that open house to the Twitter ID and Password provided in your OpenHomez.com User Account.
  

This is a manual process for the time being. You'll need to click the Twitter icon for each listing you want to "tweet". In the future, we hope to add an "Automatic" Twitter Mode so that any new listing added/updated will automatically be "tweeted" to the supplied Twitter account.

Syndicating Open House Listings

We've been ask to provide a little history as to the genesis of OpenHomez.com. You'll find more detail in this blog and at OpenHomez.com but here is a brief history. You should know that our founder is an office manager for a small independent real estate company and an IT consultant. He tells the story like this:

While going through my normal Thursday drill of preparing open house information for the weekend and posting each individual open house to a multitude of Web sites it occurred to me that this was very repetitive and mundane work, not to mention boring. Being basically lazy, I set out to write a tool that would take a single open house listing and syndicate it to as many other sites as possible but only require me to enter the data once. It’s been refined over the last year and it’s available, free of charge (ad support) to anyone who would like to use it.

The site is OpenHomez.com. As I said, it is free to all. We use the ad revenue to pay for the servers, etc. Listings point pack to the agent site(s), and of course, we don’t sell email address or other personal information. You can find additional information throughout this blog. You’ll find the system has some interesting features like email and SMS notifications, an iGoogle gadget by zip code, GPS and Calendar downloads, and a variety of other interesting features. We would greatly appreciate any feedback. We’re wide open for input and suggestions on improving the site.

RSS Feed Of Your Upcoming Open Houses

Today we added a link to an RSS Feed for your upcoming open houses. You can find the link on your My Account page or on your My Listings page. You can use the RSS link to provide your users with an RSS link that they can place in any RSS reader or gadget. You can also embed your upcoming open houses in your own Web site using this RSS feed link.

Click here for a simple, free tool to generate the code to embed your upcoming open houses in your own Web site.

Google Gadget

Today we released the first version of our Google Gadget for OpenHomez.com. It looks like this:

The gadget allows iGoogle users to monitor up to 12 upcoming open houses in up to 5 different zip/postal codes. Click HERE to get a copy of the gadget for your own iGoogle page.

RSS Feed Of Open Homes

Today we added RSS feeds to our Open House search results. From the SEARCH RESULTS PAGE you can get an RSS feed for that specific search by clicking on the icon in the SEARCH RESULTS description.

You can add these feeds to most any RSS reader or gadget page that accepts an RSS feed. You can embed this feed in a Web page too. Click here for a free, simple tool to generate the code to embed in a Web page.

Google Earth

Recently we added a file suitable for downloading into Google Earth. Sorry, it's too large for Google Maps to handle. The file contains all current and future open house data. You can find the file at http://www.openhomez.com/data/openhomez.kml .

Caution, the file contains a lot of data and may take a long time to load. The file is refreshed nightly at midnight Pacific time.

In the future, look for new mapping functions in My Listings and your Search Results including selected data small enough to load into Google Maps.

Syndications and Exposure

One of the main goals of OpenHomez.com is to provide you a single site to post your open house information and then automatically have that information propagated throughout the Internet, saving you from the tedious task of visiting each of the various classified ad and real estate sites. We will constantly be adding new ways to expose your open house information to as many search engines and eyeballs as we can. Below is a current list of our progress towards this goal.

Current Syndications And Exposure:
OpenHomez.com Notifications and Alert System
OpenHomez.com Open House Blog
OpenHomez.com Open House RSS Feed
OpenHomez.com Google Group - Allowing user comment and feedback
OpenHomez.com Google Calendar
OpenHomez.com iGoogle Gadget

Google Base
Google Buzz
Looksmart.com(Edgeio.com) and its properties
Oodle.com and its properties

Classifieds.MySpace.com (via Oodle.com)
Vast.com and its properties
RealtyFeedSearch and its properties
Eventful.com and its properties
VillagesList.com
Posterous
Twitter
Tumblr
Yakaz.com
Technorati
FriendFeed
Dwellicious.com

Things we are working on:
Automatic feed to Zillow.com
Automatic feed to Trulia.com
Automatic feed to Syndic8.com

Send Us Your Data

Effective immediately OpenHomez.com is accepting your XML data feeds. If you have a large number of open houses that you would like to post on OpenHomez.com this option will save you some time. You can upload all of your data at once. No need to enter individual listings online. Of course all of your listings, regardless of how they were entered, are available to you online.

If you're interested in bulk upload of your data please review our XML Data Feed Instructions. If you have any questions, suggestions, or an open house existing feed available, please don't hesitate to email us.

Notifications

Openhomez.com users that create an account can now create alerts and have notifications sent to their email address and/or their mobile phone when a new open house listing is created. Create and log into your account. Click on "My Alerts" and add as many alerts as you like. Check boxes for email and SMS alerts are provided for each alert.

Notifications will be sent to the email address and/or the SMS email address in your account (My Account) listing. See our FAQs for additional information on SMS email addresses.

In addition, all new listing will be posted to various Internet sources to optimize the exposure of your open house listing. See our post on Syndications and Exposure for additional information.

Notifications and postings are delivered hourly, on the hour.

Frequently Asked Questions - FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) - Below is a list of our most frequently asked questions and answers. If you don't find the information you need here please free to send us an email with your questions and suggestions.

Why should I post my open houses on OpenHomez.com? - One of the main reasons to post your open house information on the Internet is for exposure. The more eyeballs that see your posting the better turn out you will have at your open house. The problem is that visiting all of the various classified ad sites and search engines takes a lot of your time. A primary goal of OpenHomez.com is to provide you a single site to post your open house information and then we propagate that information for you. Post your information once on OpenHomez.com and we'll make sure it is spread throughout the Internet. Look for our Syndications and Exposure post in this blog for additional information.

Will this always be free? - The basic services of OpenHomez.com will always be free. The current service is supported by ad revenue and your donations. In the future we may offer premium services for a fee.

How long will my listing stay active? - An individual listing will remain accessible to you for 30 days after the event date in the listing. Any listing with an event date older than 30 days will be removed from our data base. You may renew any listing still available by simply changing the event date in the listing.

How long will others be able to see my listing? - Any listing that has an event date greater than or equal to the current date will be visible to others. Other listings will only be visible to the poster/owner.

Are pictures allowed in my listing? - Picture files for company logo, individual poster, and the listed property are allowed by not required. All pictures are referred to by URL. We do not currently allow pictures to be uploaded to our site. Pictures should be formatted for optimal display. Company logo and individual pictures will be displayed at 120 pixels wide. Property pictures will be displayed at 300 pixels wide. We recommend you use Picasa, Google's free picture editing software to prepare your photographs.

What is meant by SMS Email? - OpenHomez.com will email an alert to the SMS email address that you provide. Most mobile carriers provide a standard email address for submission of SMS messages via email to their subscribers. Here is a good list to start with. If you can't find your carrier on this list please contact your mobile carrier for instructions on how to email an SMS message to your phone. We suggest you test your SMS email address by emailing yourself an SMS message. Once you have it working you can copy that email address into your OpenHomez.com account.

Can I Provide A Bulk Data Feed? - Openhomez.com accepts bulk data feeds of open house data in XML format. Please review our XML Data Feed Instructions for further information.