In January 2007, Microsoft is scheduled to release its latest operating system, Vista.  The Primary features added to Vista are its full integration of RSS and additional RSS extensions which will broaden RSSs uses as a lead generation and capture technology.  With an integrated desktop RSS reader, Vista will also open the world of subscription news and personalized news aggregation up to an even wider consumer base, greatly increasing the marketing capability of blogs.  Because of the huge increase in blog subscribers the January release will cause, those Realtors with established, well-written blogs will benefit greatest, so there is a growing urgency for Realtors and Lenders to start blogging.

Vista’s projected adoption rate

According to Cnet, Microsoft projects that the adoption rate of Vista will be a whopping 20% of all corporate users within the first year of release (although more conservative third party estimates place that number around 10%.)  Either way, that is a pretty substantial number of corporate users in a short time space.   By late 2008, Information Week reports that those numbers are expected to climb to 39%.

The Vista release will spike the blog reading population and substantially increase blog feed subscriptions between 2007-2009.

What Vista’s RSS integration means for real estate professionals

So, what does this really mean for real estate professionals and why do you have to take the Vista release into consideration when deciding to blog? (Microsoft’s White Paper on RSS in Vista (codename Longhorn)).  For those of you not in the “know,” RSS is the technology that allows users to "subscribe" to the content or websites they have found interesting, ensuring that the latest changes or updates to the content are delivered to them, instead of having to return to the site to check it again.  While RSS is primarily used for subscribing to blogs and news today, the rich RSS support of Vista will allow subscriptions to lists and calendar events in addition to personalized search feeds.  Vista’s release will mean that everybody will start having desktop access to RSS feeds.  Sicne blogs publish feeds, those real estate professionals blogging will have a leg up on this technology and marketing channel.

Check out Vista: as a member of the Microsoft Developer Network, I am working with it right now, so here is a screen shot of  the desktop RSS reader.  Pretty slick, huh?  That being said, it is a Microsoft product so the version I am working with does have more bugs than the Numibian jungles, but what else is new? Hey- that's my blog's feed in the reader and doesn't ActiveRain look great in Vista!

Vista’s RSS feature set

Desktop integration of RSS

With an RSS reader on every Vista user’s desktop, RSS will become a more widely used technology which will force developers to come up with new and exciting uses of the technology.  RSS Pieces has already been playing with some scenarios that would turn RSS into a powerful lead generation and customer retention tool but there are a world of other possibilities to the technology.  Below I discuss some of the more obvious uses for Realtors which we have been working on:

• Internet explorer RSS tools: While browsing the Web, Vista will allow you to easily discover RSS feeds through an illuminated icon, as well as read the feed while still in the Web browser. Additionally, you will be able to subscribe to an RSS feed as easily as they now add a Web page as a favorite. Once you choose to subscribe to a feed, your subscription is available to any interested application.  Imagien being about to integrate your feed data into an application like you contact management tool or personal calendar.  You won’t have to repeatedly add the same data to multiple application

• Contact management and lead generation: A contact management application can automatically expose a subscribed feed containing people information as a new group in the application. Similarly, any application can add new feeds to the feed list. This would act as an extension to your online lead generation tools to immediately notify you of new contacts, automatically log them in your contact management application and prioritize “action items” related to this contact.

• Events calendar management of open houses or closing events (“to-do” lists): If you were about to attend an industry conference, you could subscribe to the conference's event calendar. You can then use a Vista RSS-enabled calendar application to view the events in the RSS feed from within this calendar app.  Or consider the lead generation possibilities of an Open house tool that would notify all your subscribers of upcoming open houses that meet their MLS search criteria then log that information into their personal desktop calendar and automatically remind them of the event as the date approaches. The feed could even be tailored to individual’s needs, so that the information in the users calendar could include closing dates, mortgage events, etc so they know where they need to be for any of their important closing dates.

• List management of MLS data:  Many collections of interesting content are actually not time-ordered; they are sorted by such properties as priority, cost, or simple ranking.  Vista will uniquely support list management through RSS, so unlike traditional feeds that are ordered by time, Vista will allow you to order RSS feeds by priority or other criteria.  For example, you could syndicate your MLS data and supply additional information about each item in a comparable homes list, such as price, number of bedrooms/baths, square footage and viewer rating. The Vista RSS extensions provide a general mechanism for declaring that these additional properties are useful pivots for sorting and ordering. This allows the user to sort lists by the popularity, price, amenities, etc.

• Personalized RSS MLS feeds based on user search criteria: This feature is totally available right now with RSS and many developers are already using it, however with the adoption of Vista, this use will become more prevalent.  Imagine the utility a buyer would have if they could create a search on your website for a home and subscribe to the feed so when new listings became available that met their search criteria they would be automatically delivered to their Windows desktop. 

NOTE: I have some other ideas. If you are interested in hearing them, let me know and I will do a follow-up piece on other uses for the RSS technology. 

What would you use RSS for? If you have any ideas for its uses, let me know, I love a programming challenge!