For those who don't know, Trulia Voices is an on-line "question and answer" community where (in theory) real estate consumers can pose questions that real estate professionals can answer. Market conditions, requests for local area information, questions on the real estate "process" — just about anything is fair game.
For the real estate consumer, Trulia Voices is a great platform to pose a question to the real estate professional. You will in all likelyhood get more than one quality answer/opinion. Like any such community venue, you're also likely to get some answers that are not-so-swift.
For the real estate professional, Trulia Voices serves two main purposes. 1) You can pose a question to other professionals and gather some good insight and opinion; and 2) you can answer questions and hopefully use the platform to demonstrate your expertise as well as just lend a helpful hand.
Sounds great, doesn't it? And for the most part it is. So why does Trulia Voices (sometimes) drive me crazy?
I often wonder if those responding to questions read either the question itself, or any of the previous answers before they submit their response? I see countless examples of the same answer being given over and over — to the same question. I see someone answer a location specific question that has no clue about the area. Sadly, I even see some downright rude responses from "professionals". How does this help build your credibility and web presence??
A question posed today provides some examples of all of the above. Someone asked what was the fastest way to complete the 90 hours of classroom hours required to get a real estate license. The questioner clearly identified that they were in Arizona, and their profile and the area info posted below the question further identified them as being located in Phoenix.
The first response was no doubt well intended. But it mentioned taking the licensing courses on-line as the best solution. Problem is, the State of Arizona doesn't allow licensing classes to be taken on-line, rendering this answer basically useless. The agent that answered the question is from Louisiana.
I then responed and explained on-line isn't an option in Arizona, and provided a link and phone number to a local school that offers a nine day licensing "crash course".
A "professional" in Long Island then responds with, "Well, in the time it takes to look you could probably complete the class!" Now isn't that a helpful and professional response?
The next answer was from a local agent that added some great additional info on the school I suggested. Kudos to him!
The next response was also from a local agent, suggesting the same school previously discussed in two other answers….
That was followed by another local agent that also contributed some good insight on the previously mentioned school. It's nice to see answers getting fleshed out. But also in this response was mention of taking the courses on-line — which as previously mentioned on that very question, can not be done in Arizona. Now the questioner has two local agents saying two different things, likely lending to confusion on her part.
OK, I'm sure some will see me as being all whiny about this. But I just don't see the point in: 1) answering a question where you don't know the location specific details; 2) being rude; and 3) not reading any of the previous responses and just repeating what's already been said.
No on-line community is perfect. But it takes only a few seconds to identify where in the country a question is coming from and to read any previous responses. I think if we as real estate professionals would take a few extra seconds to read before we respond, then the overall quality of Trulia Voices would improve, and it would become a more valuable tool for the real estate consumer (and hence, the real estate professional).
What do you think? Is Jay just being whiny and needing to simply get over it, or does he have at least some semblance of a valid point?
UPDATE: Jonathan Dalton opines on the same subject. He includes a link to Trulia bestowing honors on those with volumes of Trulia Voices answers. NOTE! I'm not saying any of these contributors don't deserve recognition. I know many of them. But I think Trulia's "ranking" of agents based on the quantity of answers is fundamentally flawed.
[tags]Trulia Voices[/tags]
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Jay,
I just responded to Jonathan’s post on this matter, seems like we have hit a nerve! Sorry.
When we started Trulia Voices it made sense to rank members on the quantity of contributions as that is all we had to go on. However now there has been a significant increase in usage and a wide spectrum in the quality of answers, we are working on rethinking this and building out a better way to rank contributors.
So, I fully agree that ranking of agents purely on the quantity of contributions across all locations does not encourage an increase in the quality of contributions.
We’re watching and learning what the community is doing and building systems to improve the quality AND quantity of contributions.
Watch this space, we’re working on solutions to fix this problem and feverishly building more tools.
Pete
Pete –
I saw your response on Jonathan’s blog and really appreciate you stopping by here too.
Personally, I don’t see the need to “rank” agents at all. If an agent wants to increase their web presence, reach out to potential clients, and help others, isn’t that reason enough to participate?
Unfortunately (and sadly) probably not for many out there…
Ranking agents — who are competitive to a fault at times — is clearly one way to encourage participation. You’ve got the “thumbs up/down” system, but as can be seen countless places on the net, (Digg, Active Rain, RealEstateVoices, etc) that sort of system is easily abused (and/or negelected). “Best answers” can help too, but I suspect the vast majority of those submitting questions don’t ever go back and select a best answer.
I’m all for open and tranparent sharing of information. But encouraging agents from (for example) Louisiana to supply Phoenix specific answers clearly helps no one.
I appreciate that it’s not an easy thing to solve. Encouraging sheer volume (and rewarding it with higher placement and “awards”) is not the solution, IMHO. Abolishing the rankings altogether is probably a frightening thought to Trulia. But if that were done, I think you might find you are left with solid base of agents willing to answer questions for the right reasons, and not just to see themselves artificially inflated in some arbitrary ranking system.
For our readers that aren’t aware, Pete who commented above is the Founder and CEO of Trulia.
It’s good that some people are working with whole heart to develop some real effective tools… Not only to them but they can also be of great help to others too!!!
Kudos!!!
1.) Jay, you attract more self-promotional-spam/PR-stunts than anyone I know…
2.) ditto on rankings and idiots commenting out of their scope of geography, specialty or intellectual level.
Trulia could be GREAT if the rankings went away and city-specific questions were only answer-able by local agents (per their profiles)… less riff-raff. But, what do I know?
Well I may be guilty of being rude, because I have been called that a few times by discount Rebates.
I do find Trulia to be very useful. I have received and come up with some great ideas from it.
I do not think we need any ranking system at all.
There are a handful of people who are ranked high and actually deserve it. They have given useful answers.
As Trulia grows the problem will get worse. You will have more one line recycled answers.
You are right to be irritated.
Any purely points based system always gets abused. All it takes is a small group of people figuring out what nets them points and then churn them out. Or 4-8 people form a mini alliance and boost each others stuff. Toss in a few sock puppets and suddenly it’s a big ball of garbage.
The solution is Trulia needs some sort of moderator having a more active invovlement.
Even before I read the comments to this post, I had a flashback upon reading your post’s last sentence — >
I thought to myself… “you could just as easily replace the word “Trulia” with “ActiveRain” and it would be just as true. Any time there is a ranking system, people will find a way to “game it” rendering it worthless. AR’s Q&A forum shares the same problem as Trulia Voices with out-of-staters answering questions they sometimes know squat about.
Jay you sound logical not whiny; it’s like the AR Q and A system that allows people from any State to answer questions anywhere. I agree with Atol that a point based system without any restrictions or guidelines breeds this kind of thing.
One of the gals on Trulia with over 600 points? Not only was she gaming the system by commenting even when she didn’t have a clue about the area, but she was giving thumbs downs to people who were already top Trulia Voices; so you can add disrespect to the gaming the system thing too I stopped going into Trulia as often because of the quality of responses. This is a good post to alert consumers about what is going on, in MHO that might be whiny too lol
Jay – I have to admit I was staying away from Trulia voices until this past week where I was guided by a colleague to a poorly answered question about architecture in Miami and just HAD to intervene.
Like everything else, we will find clueless people answering questions. I will never understand why someone would try to answer a question they don’t understand.
My favorite is when people leave a link to their site or their phone number – “call me….I’ll help you”
Thanks for commenting Ines. I’ve had some *great* exchanges on Trulia Voices. But SO MUCH of it is just blather.
As for, “call me….I’ll help you”…. that’s just silly, dare I say stupid? Apparently those folks have ZERO clue about how to reach out to internet “prospects”. I bet if you asked one of the you’d get a response like, “but all it takes is for one of them to dial the phone”….
jay – you have to agree that we have come a long way, when it comes to “reaching out to internet prospects”. (those of us who are out here blogging and mingling) : )
“jay – you have to agree that we have come a long way, when it comes to “reaching out to internet prospects”.”
ABSOLUTELY!!!
And I think Trulia Voices can be a great tool for this. Personally, I’d like to see them eliminate the “points” for responses. Then maybe people would only answer what they were qualified to answer. But I don’t see that happening…
The trulia comments bother me less than the AR ones. On AR you get 20 comments saying great post. While this doesnt add value its not a problem. On trulia you get alot of people answering questions they don’t know the answer to. It might be good to restrict questions to locals. If someone asks what the east side of Phoenix is like there is no reason for people in Alaska to answer.
“A “professional” in Long Island then responds with, “Well, in the time it takes to look you could probably complete the class!” Now isn’t that a helpful and professional response?”
Welcome to New York. Be sure to leave your kindness and coherence at the door.
Lose the ranking system. Lose the thumbs up/down.
The noise would drop by 75%.
Bob is right, if you lose the rankings you lose the activity, I find the same problem in active rain, useless comment spam on blogs..people chiming in with “great post” “I agree” etc ever other comment…Makes it hard to actively get involved!
Hi Jay, I am in total agreement with you! It would be great if there was a way to limit state specific questions to Real Estate Professionals licensed in that state. IMHO I feel that many responders just want to get their “name in lights” for the Google juice, so to speak and do not care about adding value to the conversation.
Another issue that bugs me is when RE Agents outside of the local area, answer questions about another local market. How does this help the consumer???
If someone is looking for info say on the RE market in LA, why should a San Diego or San Fran professional add their 2 cents???… These practices dilute the purpose of the Voices and send me running….
Take a look at this question answered by a bunch of non-locals that don’t know the particular market – it’s crazy!
http://www.trulia.com/voices/Home_Buying/Is_the_market_going_really_down_fast_would_buying_-28356–
What matters to me, more than quantity, is quality, pertinence, and timeliness. Quality and pertinence have been mentioned throughout the comments but I think that with newspapers going under and markets changing at a minute by minute rate, it’s increasingly important to judge real estate professionals by how fast they respond. Investors are increasingly in need of quick answers; if it takes a week to respond, the odds are the issue may have passed. People are turning to the web and to bloggers for fast, accurate and pertinent answers. Quantity is a decent metric to consider but should be weighted below the others data points.