It’s been rather interesting around Incredible Agent lately. Between getting ready for our giant booth at NAR, launching new features every week on our platform and trying to help our clients survive the current real estate market, we’ve been awfully busy.

One of the things we’ve been running into lately is defining the difference between our product and Point2, Superlative, Z57, Advanced Access, Homes.com, etc., etc. etc. For us it’s very simple, but we’re starting to realize the challenge ahead of us for defining the difference. Here’s my quick shot at it.

We’re creating a network of real estate brokers and agents to collaborate and create an open enterprise platform for themselves and their companies. The other companies products are simply real estate websites.

Example: MS DOS/Windows is a platform (Incredible Agent), Outlook is a product running on a platform (all the others).

Our philosophy is rooted in the fact that real estate 1.0 was all about competiting against one another and that real estate 2.0 will be rooted in collaboration.

There has been lots of talk lately about the direction of RE 2.0 and where it will take all of us. At Incredible Agent, we believe collaboration will be the name of the game. Collaborating together to build better products for brokerages and agents. Collaborating together to create a product better than Trulia, Zillow, Realtor.com, etc. After all, collaboration is what Active Rain, Facebook, Youtube, Trip Advisor, IncredibleAgents.com and all the other successful User Generated Content(UGC) sites out there are built on.

User generated content is an overused term with little clarity. Some seem to implement UGC just to show off that they’re a Web 2.0 company. Yawn! RE 2.0 has nothing to do with Questions and Answers. It has everything to do with collaboration. Collaborating to solve problems and find great solutions.

Incredible Agent is building a team of brokerages and agents who have come together to build a better solution for their companies, themselves and their clients.

We’re not building websites! We’re building a platform!

That’s why we don’t sell websites, we sell memberships.

Side Note: The term “Platform” is becoming a buzz word lately around the RE space. Remember, a platform is something that can grow as the users build onto it. A simple website with a few tools is not a platform.

For 100% of my real estate career I have loathed real estate websites. Simply put…They suck! That’s one of the reason’s I started Incredible Agent. I wanted to create good websites that stayed up to date with technology and didn’t look like they were built in 1997. This is a common complaint and I am 100% confident that I am not alone. I hear it all the time from agents, consumers, home buyers…whoever! It’s the first thing on their mind when I say I help agents market themselves on the Internet. Personally, I think the people in charge of the website providers should be taken out back and straightened out. You know who they are….Homes.com, Superlative, Z57, Number1Expert, AdvancedAccess, Etc.

Since starting Incredible Agent, we’ve been able to help a few agents with their website. Not nearly as many as we want, but we have a big announcement coming soon that will help every agent have a great looking and productive website. If you want to help in this endeavor…drop us a line. We’re looking for a few good people to spread the word.