New tool for real estate marketing
Real estate search portal Roost.com quietly released a new Facebook application they’ve developed called “Market Tab.”
The Market Tab Facebook Application is currently being tested in four cities and will be “pushing a Beta version in the next week or so,” according to Roost.com’s Senior Director of Marketing and Social Media, Derek Overbey.
This free tool adds a tab to any agent’s Facebook page that appears as below:
Although sheep throwing and pokes are great, the “Market View” tab increases agent productivity on Facebook by adding local real estate information to your facebook page that includes school info, residential property data, walkability and other information provided by Roost.
What intrigues me most about this FB app is that Roost says that “you can also brand this tab with your own company logo & links.” Most applications are geared toward promoting the vendor over the end user, but I think Roost will have a higher adoption rate because of their thinking about the consumer (Realtors in this case) and how they will use the application.
AgentGenius.com is not affiliated with Roost.com.
Lani is the COO and News Director at The American Genius, has co-authored a book, co-founded BASHH, Austin Digital Jobs, Remote Digital Jobs, and is a seasoned business writer and editorialist with a penchant for the irreverent.

Darin Persinger
February 15, 2010 at 12:37 am
This is so important – that it is on the PAGE. There are apps out there for personal page, but that would go against the facebook TOS agreement.
Congrats to you ROOST!
Ricardo Bueno
February 15, 2010 at 12:41 am
Lani & Derek: First of all, good stuff! Can’t wait to hear more. Now if you’re help me with the following question I’d appreciate it… How does this differ from Oodle Pro and their Facebook Marketplace app?
apps.facebook.com/marketplace
Thanks!
@Ribeezie
Ralph Bell
February 15, 2010 at 7:14 am
Use this with the Realtor.com app that displays your listings on your page and it definitely will help in marketing you as a REALTOR on facebook.
Sam
February 15, 2010 at 10:39 am
I think that Facebook is still in it’s infancy when it comes to advertising, but apps like this one will make it much easier to use the platform to actually network rather than ‘poke’ and irritate people.
Although Findaproperty and Rightmove will always remain strong in the UK, less conventional sites like Globrix, Nestoria, Zoopla and even niche social networks like Asmallworld are now being used by people looking to source property.
Sheri Moritz
February 15, 2010 at 11:31 am
Love it!! Can’t wait for the Raleigh/Durham NC area to be included. I have it all set up waiting and ready.
Patrick
February 15, 2010 at 12:55 pm
Great app…loaded it up over the weekend. Nice job ROOST!
Grant in Nashville
February 15, 2010 at 6:26 pm
So will this app allow you to market your own listings only or will it allow you to provide a sort of IDX for all of the properties in your MLS?
Derek Overbey
March 2, 2010 at 10:52 pm
So this post was about two weeks early. Tomorrow we officially launch the “beta” version of the Roost Social Real Estate? Application for Facebook and we couldn’t be more excited. The application can be downloaded at https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=263402840772&ref=ts and can be configured in less than 5 minutes. We are mashing up data from Roost, Altos Research, Education.com and Walk Score for the more than 10,000 cities we currently service. This provides agents and brokers with a clean, professional local real estate presence on Facebook. Try it out. We’d love to hear your feedback.
Now on to the specific questions……
@Ribeezie This provides agents and brokers with the ability to showcase the area they services not just the listings they have. We will release a featured listing component in one of the upcoming releases.
Grant In a future release, the app will have IDX compliant real estate search built in. There will be a fee for this service but we are making it as attractive as possible for agents.