Vidlisting Blog: Web Real Estate Video

As we near launch of the next generation of Vidlisting real estate video services in the next two weeks or so, one big area of focus has been the processing capability of the cluster of servers that we use to convert videos, resize photos on the fly, generate documents, and make custom widgets in real time. We’ve had a few experiences where videos get “stuck” in the system and much of the problem has been self-inflicted in that we didnt initially build the cluster management app in the best possible way to begin with.

The management app asks questions of each server such as: are you ok? are you ready to work? what are you doing?

Initially, the processing system was built in a way that the last answer to these questions would always be valid. We knew it wasnt perfect but being “in a rush” to go live, we stayed with it.   The result was that we occasionally ran into issues where videos were stuck in the system - for example, the management app still believed that a given server was processing a small video days after upload and without any email or warning to the support team.  This was because the processing server had experienced an error that prevented it from making another report to the management app.

Ugg. So, about 18 months ago, I asked the dev that wrote this to fix it and make it more flexible so that the processing machine could better report problems. At that time, we also instituted a way that each processing machine could not only identify/report an error and also “recover” back to a state where it would once again be ready to continue to work without a technician having to manually clear errors.

So, yesterday, as part of the code review for our next release, I was winding through the code of this dev that wrote this functionality but is no longer with our company.  It was a real eye opener. I realized that while the improved system is better, there were still a few opportunities for videos to get “stuck”in the system as it essentially used the same concept as the original bad code.

Our cluster is designed to serve a whole range of customers inside and outside of real estate. I took the time yesterday to completely rewrite the way that this functionality works as a result. The changes will improve both processing and reporting. The support team will be notified as occasional occur and all of the processing information around that error will be stored. The historical data we collect with these changes will help us to continually identify bottlenecks or issues within the processing cluster.

We shouldn’t be hearing “where’s my darn real estate video?!?” anymore once these changes are live.

Many people and organizations don’t know the business advantages of using the Vidlisting platform for their real estate video marketing or content management needs.  We’ll be working to change that with our next release.  This is one in a series of posts that will provide an overview of the existing feature sets at Vidlisting and introduce the concept for the next release in the same functionality area.

This post will focus specifically on geolocation and mapping and how Vidlisting users can create sophisticated maps of their property and points of interest around that property literally in seconds with almost no effort.

THE CURRENT VIDLISTING MAPPING FUNCTIONALITY

Though we’ve had geolocation capability built into our enterprise developer programming interface for almost 2 years, Vidlisting began providing a consumer level of integrated mapping for free and paid users about 6 months ago.  About two weeks ago, we started opening the map pane on the player by default.

Here is what is generated today at the free level for uploaded property videos using the existing version of the Vidlisting platform:

Generating the map involves no extra work other than the normal upload information requirements. The map as it exists today has five components:

1) Town description:  We have a system for automatically generating area descriptions for almost every town in the United States and many foreign locations.

2) Dynamic Map Filter:  The dynamic map filter automatically customizes a list of categories for points of interest around the property.  Rather than overwhelm users with hundreds of points on the map, we start out with 5 basic categories and let the user choose what else they want to see.  The categories are dynamic in that only categories that apply to the property’s area are shown to the user (i.e. if there aren’t any airports locally, the airport category isn’t shown.  The filter does not require a page refresh to show filtered items nor will changing it stop the video that is playing.

3) The Map: There is a large map that shows the property and the filtered points of interest.

4) Local Information: This section presents a wide range of local real estate market reports and other real estate related information specific to the town and area around the property.

5) Content Owner Changes: The member that uploaded the video can make certain changes from directly within the player without having to re-enter the Vidlisting member area.

 THE NEXT VERSION OF VIDLISTING MAPPING FUNCTIONALITY

Our next version of the Vidlisting platform will bring a whole slew of new real estate video and content management capabilities to both the free and paid levels of Vidlisting membership.  We are focusing the mapping areas of this release in the areas of adding new mapping functionality, integrating other existing Vidlisting geolocation services that we’ve been offering for some time, being able to personalize what users see without having to configure the map for every video uploaded, and making the mapping service easier to put on your own website.

We also have added a new set of developer focused capabilities that will let professional and non-professional web developers easily bring a full range of mapping functionality into their customer websites with whatever branding that they choose with a single api call.

So, we have been busy as I’ve mentioned before. Some of the new mapping functionality has been live for a month or so on other partner websites and we’ve been able to respond to feedback and make suggested improvements for launch on Vidisting.  We’ve been using this time with the real estate market down to invest in functionality and platform stability.

2010 will be your year and Vidlisting has the tools to help your success.

We’ve reached a point for development and testing where we’ll need to do an occasional reboot of the vidlisting web server over the next 6 hours or so today Friday 18 Dec.  We apologize for any inconvenience but know that this means that new features are one day closer.

Given the upcoming holidays, it’s better to have the team do this during the day rather than keep them up late tonight or working this weekend.

We’ve still been quiet over the past few months as we focus on our next release of Vidlisting 2010.  Some positive milestones have been achieved since we last communicated:

The Vidlisting site is now running on top of the next release’s platform infrastructure. In previous releases, we’ve tested in a test environment and then had to migrate the site to a new underlying database a few days before launch. This caused lots of “launch bugs”.  By finishing the database first and migrating well before launch, you’ll gain the following benefits:

1 - test the new platform and real estate specific features exactly as they’ll appear for launch

2 - provide beta testing opportunities for both individual’s and enterprises (in some cases, we have a small portion of new functionality already live on customer sites)

3 - have all of the documentation ready at launch exactly as it will appear to users at launch

I have to say that we’ve really done some things for this upcoming release that no other online video platform is doing at all.   The next release includes the following:

- New Real Estate Specific Content Management Features:  You’ll see a whole slew of new features specially aimed for real estate brokers, buyers, and sellers.  You’ll have full control over how these features appear, what information they provide, and how you want to implement them on your site.  We’ve significantly reduced the complexity of our upcoming dashboard and configuration as well as made a number of other improvements.

- New Platform Functionality:  You’ll really be able to push forward your website’s branding and content especially with the platform automatically managing content from your team. You’ll have unmatched local area and  personalization features as well as the ability to instantly include a wide range of platform functionality on your own website or blog with your own branding.  Your website will have things  that you may have never thought possible and, in most cases, won’t take any knowledge of code or having to constantly cut and paste. There’s a lot more that we are not talking about yet that we’ll touch on at launch.

- Enterprise Services:  We are really doing some game changing work to support the entire spectrum of enterprise online content management needs both inside and outside of real estate. We’ve gotten a very positive response from those that have seen our demo so far.  Though the details I can share are still sparse, no one else that we know of is out there doing what we’ve done..not Youtube or anyone else…  I’ll only say this, you’ll be amazed at the wide range of possibilities  that will open up for businesses and organizations with a single click.

- Developer Community: We love developers. While our developer community is not specific to real estate, those real estate website owners that know code will have a full Vidlisting toolbox for use on their own websites and wordpress blogs. We’ve really invested a lot of time here to support both amateurs that know a little code and want to put wazoo functionality on their real estate website or blog as well as large organizations with a single dev or a professional team of developers at their disposal.  Many of these soon to be released tools are actually already functioning on live customer sites as part of our beta program.

Stay tuned - with the ease of integration that we’ve built in, this will be the release that totally changes your thoughts around how to manage and integrate content on your own website or portal.

We took our time thinking about how to best integrate Twitter syndication into our platform.  Here is some of what we thought about:

- Ease of Use: We wanted it to be simple for people to post to twitter.  We also dont want to store login info.

Step 1	Step 2

-  About You Not Us: We wanted the information posted in twitter to be about you rather than an advertisement for us. That said, we’re adding the title of the video to your twitter link. It’s a common theme for us at Vidlisting. You’ve worked hard to establish your branding - your real estate video hosting service should not be diluting your agent or broker branding.  If you are not a registered Vidlisting member of any level (including free members), the twitter announcement may have Vidlisting somewhere in it at our option.

- Points To Your Video Wherever it Is: The link in twitter should point to wherever your video is.  If you have done the one time configuration for a custom video player page, then the link in twitter will point to it rather than to the vidlisting page.

-  Not Spammy: We dont want to spam twitter with every action that you take on our real estate video site. You or your viewers can choose to add a post to twitter as you choose to.   We’ve even added the option to post to twitter from custom video player pages on your own website. Best of all, adding the video to twitter will not interrupt the video as it plays.  The real estate video will continue to play normally if someone chooses to post to twitter.

Let us know what you think about this path that we’ve chosen.

Webinar: Online Multimedia Tools For Real Estate Associations And Local Boards
Thursday, June 4, 2009 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM EDT
Registration: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/737417682

This free webinar is designed to provide an overview of the enterprise level Vidlisting tools and their application to real estate associations. The webinar will cover tools that can:

- bring the collective knowledge of the association staff and members online for the benefit of the association members

- group and syndicate local information from the association to its membership

- provide new revenue streams for local associations from activities that the association is doing anyway

This is NOT simply information about things that you already know…it’s a new way to think about the online experience and the real estate association’s role in that experience.  Please join us or, better yet, invite your real estate association to join us for this webinar overview.

If you are a vidlisting member, you’ll start seeing changes in your real estate video URLs. The first thing that you’ll notice are the search engine friendly URLs for property videos on the vidlisting video. This means no more video URL’s with a code - you’l see actual serach engine indexable text.

Here is an example of one of the new URLs: http://www.vidlisting.com/jimduncan/Highlands-at-Mechum-River-Charlottesville-Virginia-United-States/

About 50% of the live property videos for Vidlisting members already have their search engine friendly URLs ready.  We’ve finish the rest and all of the other videos over the next few days.

We’ve also created an interface where you can create your own custom URL for a video for SEO or vanity purposes. Don’t like the URL for  given video? Vidlisting members can change them as many times as they like. All of the previous URLs (including the one with the video code in it) will always remain live and point to the latest URL to avoid duplicate content penalties.

28 May 2009 Edit: We encountered a few bugs with this and fixed them both on our regular site and on the facebook version of Vidlisting. For instance, Facebook silently adds some things to URLs that didn’t affect videos when we used codes but caused an error with text. Things all seem well today - if you received an error yesterday, we apologize.

This feature does NOT apply to the following:

- Vidlisting members that have a custom video player page:   Custom video player pages will always the priority link. We think that your customers should be watching videos on your website and search engines should index the content there for you as well.

- Guest members: If you use the public Vidlisting upload page and are not a registered Vidlisting member, the system will generate the standard URL with a video code. You must be aVidlisting member of any level (including free) to take advantage of search engine friendly URLs.

All of the eligible videos on the site should be converted by the end of this week.

We’ve soft launched the Vidlisting facebook app. You can get it by typing “http://apps.facebook.com/videorealestate/” in your browser after logging in to facebook.  Before you do that though, keep reading….

The app isnt a Facebook login on Vidlisting.  It’s a streamlined version of Vidlisting on Facebook.  We’ve got about 60% of our full functionality in this first release.  Here are two examples from Mike Mueller (join him on Facebook or Twitter)

What You Can Do With Vidlisting Facebook App?

Upload: you can upload vidlisting videos, documents,  YouTube videos, Real Estate Shows, images/photos, and links into a workspace just like from within Vidlisting.

Publish: You can publish any of the above types of content into your Facebook news feed. Once published, your Facebook friends can see and watch the content as well.  You can also add a Real Estate tab to your facebook and link your choice of shared content or content from a folder.

Organize: You can create folders where you can organize your content and syndicate all types of content with your videos.

Configure:  You can configure all of your content in your workspace without leaving Facebook.  this means that you can change titles, photos,and associate content.

 Embed: You can grab your widget embed codes for videos, documents, or other videos.

Personalize:  If you have configured a custom video widget in the Vidlisting member area, the custom widget will automatically show up in the Facebook news feed. Also, if you have competed the on-time configuration required for a custom video player and placed it on your own web site, the link in the news feed will point at your website….not the Vidlisting web site.  Here is an example of a custom widget in the newsfeed:

Our facebook version is really slick and obviously a lot more than just real estate video. You simply drag and drop your content into folders just like in the Vidlisting member area. We’ve already published a preview of our real estate video facebook application with screenshots.

The one part that is a big clumsy is the application setup….this is driven by requirements within the Facebook platform. You’ll also need to do a one time login or registration into Vidlisting.  You should never have to do again.

We’ve long believed in three things: building industry leading tools, reducing barriers to real estate video, and providing online tools that do not co-opt the branding of an agent. So, we’re continuing to focus on building tools that do at least one but preferably all of those.

One of the those that likely means all three of the above is our new feature that allows Vidlisting members of any level to do simple upload and conversion of real estate video using email. The source can be a email generated from any email capable mobile device or regular computer.

Here is how to convert the video using email:

- The member opens any email client and from their Vidlisting member email address creates a new email.

- The member attaches a video  that the member wants to convert  to the email (required). The video attachment can be in any of the Vidlisting supported video file types.

- The member adds a subject line to the email (required). The subject line will become the title used in the video widget that is created.

- The member can also attach a second attachment of a image or photograph (optional). The optional image will be used as the default image in the video widget. If no image is attached, then the default image will be randomly taken from the video by the  platform during conversion.

- The member sends the email with the attachment(s) to ceng[[at]]vidlisting.com

A video received by email for conversion is processed just like any video that uses the online upload form. A mouseover video preview is generated, a video widget is created using the member defaults, and if the member has a custom video player page, the video will automatically redirect to the member own website. The geolocation of the video will be the default geolocation of the member.  We dont know how much easier we can makereal estate video conversion.

Note that the first version of this feature is pretty barebones. We’ll add several advanced features soon such as choosing different video types (podcast, interview, etc.) and more accurate automated geolocation. In the interim, enjoy this feature. This feature will be open to non-Vidlisting members until 9pm US Eastern time, 14 May 2009 for testing and evaluation purposes.

Yesterday, we added a new time saving feature for Vidlisting, the content tab. The my content tab is a way for Vidlisting members to quickly access a representation of their Vidlisting member workspace on the home page and view/manipulate their real estate content without having to log in.

The feature was driven by customer feedback and frankly our own experience using our platform. If we needed to pass a private video link to a customer from some time ago or needed to move content to/from a folder, we had the choice of either logging in as a member or digging through conversion emails to find what we were looking for. The My Content tab makes content quickly and easily accessible for basic functions.

(click the widget to watch the 2 1/2 minute video demo of the My Content tab - note that the video is part of a video podcast series and appears in a custom video player page made within minutes using the custom video player tools and plays on a non-vidlisting site )

The ability to quickly move content into and out of a folder  also is more important now that members can control content syndication using folders.  Members can easily examine the contents of both regular and virtual folders as well as drag/drop content into them or out of them…just like in the user workspace.

Couple of quick points that you’ll need to know:

- if you have a custom video player page, the videos will link to that custom player.

- Note that anything requiring more than simple manipulation or viewing will require login.

- This feature appears automatically to Vidlisting members that have logged in after 5 April 2009. If you are a member and dont see it, just log in or register once and it will be visible to you. You’ll see a lot more of this interface moving forward.

- This feature is on by default for all members. We’ll add a link in the configuration area to allow you to turn off this feature.