By: Tina Merritt
Wolkia
www.wolkia.com

276% Growth in 35-54 Year old users
194% Growth 55+ Year old users
101% Growth 25-34 Year old users
66.3% of users are over 21

The key to success here is simple. If you want social
networking to work for you, keep it fun, keep it real
and stop selling.
It's not like TV where you've got 30 seconds to slam
them with whatever product or idea you may have.
Your internet presence is not a brochure either.
An active profile is something much greater and
potentially more powerful. It's a living testimonial that
places you as a professional in a social context.

•Engage your audience by starting a group for \"fans\" ie: your mom
and childhood friends who want to see you succeed. Get people
to join you in a real estate related game.
•Join existing groups that interest you. If you join one of the big
real estate groups, engage your collegues by opening a discussion.
•Start at least one fire on the message boards by asking an
intelligent real estate question that people are compelled to
answer.
•Don't blow hot air, post notes that clearly show your expertise.
•Include links to your blog and website
•Check your profile settings and make sure your profile can be
indexed by search engines

145,000 members
Free or low cost blogs w/ great Google-juice
International networking
Great place to ―brainstorm‖
LOCALISM!

Linkedin is more of a BUSINESS network than a SOCIAL
network.
Linkedin Groups
Linkedin is for Person A connecting Person B to Person C
Participate in discussions

Yes, this is a social network – really!
Consumers love video – especially raw video.
Google loves video.
Video is the future of real estate.
Every agent can have their own ―Channel‖ for free!

Wildly popular photo sharing, photo search and social networking
site.
It's owned by Yahoo! and so will be around for a while.
Flickr can be an extremely valuable (and dirt-cheap or free) tool
for building relationships with people who are interested in your
focus area, and for enabling them to find you and ultimately do
business with you.
Flickr albums frequently surface very high in Google search
results.

Myspace, at it’s best, is a fantastic communication tool that can
assist people interact on just about any subject.
Think of the younger brother or sister communicating with their
older sibling in college, across the country or across the world.

The new Zillow API Network turns member sites into mini real
estate portals.
Search results list, Zestimate® home valuations, home valuation
charts, comparable houses, and market trend charts.
Zillow Discussions allow Agents to engage with the consumer
through questions/answers.

Trulia Voices is a place for you to ask questions about real estate
and share what you know with locals, agents, brokers and
experts.

FriendFeed is a service that makes it easy to share with
friends online. It offers a fun and interactive way to discover
and discuss information among friends.
You get a customized feed made up of the content that your
friends shared—from photos to interesting links and videos to
messages just for you.
And your friends get their customized feeds, full of the cool
stuff that you've shared.

Lifestream Platform delivers real-time, chronological updates
from all of your friends. Lifestream updates are available from
your friends from Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter
and Delicious, with many more to come.
Bebo allows you to share your life—past, present and future
with everyone you care about through Lifestory. The Lifestory
provides you with an interactive display of life events in
chronological order in an intuitive and easy to use timeline.
Lifestories are made up photos, videos, stories and special
events that you want to record or schedule. The Lifestory is
updated automatically each time you add important content to
your Bebo profile or manually add a new event.

With more than 100 million members worldwide, Friendster is a
leading global online social network.
Friendster is focused on helping people stay in touch with friends
and discover new people and things that are important to them.
Online adults, 18 and up, choose Friendster to connect with
friends, family, school, social groups, activities and interests.

Launched in 2003, hi5 is now one of the world's largest social
networks and a top 20 website globally — with 80+ million
registered members in over 200 nations. hi5 Networks, Inc. is
headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Zorpia was founded in 2003 with a goal of bringing people
together from all over the world and allowing them to share
their ideas and interests.
Primary features are photo album, online journal, social
networking, customized homepage, comment system and
discussion forum.
The headquarters are located in Hong Kong, China.

StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites.
As you click Stumble!, it delivers pages matched to your personal
preferences.
These pages have been explicitly recommended by your friends or one of
6 million+ other websurfers with interests similar to you. Rating these sites
you like automatically shares them with like-minded people – and helps
you discover great sites your friends recommend.

Digg is a social news website. All editorial control belongs to
the Digg community members. This concept runs counter to
traditional media outlets where stories are chosen by a small
handful of editors. With Digg, all stories are submitted and
voted on by the community members. If a story becomes
popular enough, it gets promoted to the front page.

A social network that allows users to interact with each other
and provide user ratings and reviews based upon past
interactions.
―Review a Property‖, which allows you to write a comment
on a property that you see while browsing listings.
You can also show off ―Your Crib‖, which will allow you to
display pictures and videos of your house, just like the
popular MTV show ―Cribs‖, we all are celebrities in our own
mind.