The acquisition of SocialBios by Move is a smart strategic move. Why? Several reasons

  1. It’s “social” — which means it’ll generate some buzz in the industry (the fact that this post has 55 re-tweets should tell you something) and give their sales team something else to speak to agents and brokers about
  2. Though I haven’t spent an immense amount of time analyzing it, the actual socialbios product seems like a winner on all fronts — and can help agents convert more leads to clients
  3. Gives Move an awesome product to integrate onto agent websites — which means more links back to them and better rankings in the search engines as a result

Back to conversion since that’s a topic we spend quite a bit of time analyzing at Virtual Results, I certainly agree with Brian on this:

commonality aids conversion

I know from my own web browsing habits that at least some people (like me) are drawn to similar interests and mutual connections. Remember, the only truly unique thing you bring to the table is YOU — raw information is everywhere, which is why the social component of the web is what is so interesting to me. A few weeks ago, Eric Bramlett (a close friend of mine who is a Broker in Austin and has built his own IDX product) told me that he closed a sale because Rapportive (an add on to gmail) showed the potential client he was speaking to that they had a mutual friend — and that broke the ice enough to connect on some level beyond business.

I’m not entirely sure how many people browse the web that way (ie LOOKING for commonality), but it’s safe to say there are a fair number of us out there. It’s the reason I think social objects are so important, and such an under utilized marketing strategy. It’s hard to prove the numbers behind it, but I can confidently say social objects do help convert business (if used correctly).

So, if this product can help agents generate more leads by helping potential clients figure out people and interests in common — as I think it can — this is a winner (and a strategic plus for Move).

Note: As you are probably aware, I’m only SLIGHTLY biased when it comes to the portal space given I worked for Zillow for almost 5 years. I hope those reading from Zillow’s HQ’s forgive me to praising the competition on this one 🙂