Nestoria fans,
as you know we keep an eagle eyed watch on the interweb for new trends in map based services and how they might be applied to the property search space. Today we talk with Nick Black, long time force in the UK geo enthusiast scene, and now co-founder of new map based advertising start up Mappam. Nick, thanks for talking with us. 1. Explain a bit the concept behind Mappam. Why is it a useful solution for advertisers and for webmasters? Mappam is about putting your adverts on the map. There are loads of map-mashup sites out there, ranging from high traffic commercial sites like Plazes or Nestoria that use Google Maps as a base map, or community sites like OpenStreetMap, to the hundreds of new map-mashups that appear every week. Mappam gives the people who run these sites a chance to earn some money and gives advertisers a chance to reach a massive audience. As an advertiser, you can visit mappam.com and place an advert, choosing the exact location where you want the ad to appear, and uploading a small icon to represent your ad. The icon you upload will appear on all of our host’s sites. When someone clicks on it, a bubble will pop up, showing your advert. You only pay when someone clicks on the info bubble and is redirected to your site, and you get to choose how much you pay. As a host, you can add one line of Javascript to your existing Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Multimap or OpenStreetMap/OpenLayers map and Mappam ads will appear. When one of your visitors clicks, you earn money. 2. Are you seeing more and more ‘mash-ups’ trying to make the leap from side hobby project to actually becoming a viable business? Why should they choose Mappam versus something like AdSense. The map-site business model is unproven, to say the least. A major problem with using traditional banner advertising on a map-site is the lack of context - the advertising provider will usually key-word search your site, so a site like OpenStreetMap has adverts for companies selling geo-data, but nothing that is related the geographic context of the site. If map-mashup sites can display adverts on their maps, they will be presenting their users with information that is relevant to them. The users will be happier with their experience, they will be more likely to click on the ad and the site will earn more money (as well as have happier users). 3. What are your thoughts on balancing the need for monetisation with user experience? User experience is important, but providing the most relevant information is the most important thing. With Mappam, people can monetise their sites and provide relevant information to their visitors at the same time. Banner ads are bad for maps for two reasons: they don’t provide relevant information and they take up loads of space. No-one wants a map-site with half the screen taken up with adverts. Mappam ads are small icons that take up just a tiny amount of screen space - making for a much better user experience. 4. What possibilities do you see for map based advertising specifically in the property sector? There a load of opportunities for map advertising within the property sector and we’re really happy to have Nestoria onboard as Mappam launch partners. For those with property to sell, Mappam provides a great platform for getting the message across. There’s also a lot of opportunity for providing relevant information to prospective house buyers - I bet Ikea would love to be able to reach everyone who’s going to buy a flat in Putney. If they combined the Mappam API with Nestoria’s API, they would know the size of house you were looking at and could advertise your perfect kitchen. Imagine that! Thanks Nick. Great to see that the tidal wave of technical innovation in online cartography over the last 18 months is now starting to be matched by business innovation as well. We’ll obviously be watching Mappam closely. past Nestoria interviews: Fleming Madsen, Mike Price, Prashant Agarwal.Archive for June, 2007
Dearest Nestolonians,
As you’ll recall, a few weeks ago we had the honour of being the only start up invited to speak at Google’s London Developer day. It was at that event that Google announced the beta launch of Google Mapplets, a way for external developers to build a simple tool to allow any user of the Google maps website to overlay datasets onto the map. It’s very similar in concept to the local content (schools, pubs, transport options, etc) that Nestoria users can overlay on the map on a Nestoria property search results page. We’re pleased to announce that we’ve now rolled out our own Google mapplets (one for the UK and one for Spain). You can add the UK mapplet here, and then use it by surfing to http://maps.google.co.uk/preview. Here’s a screenshot:
Greetings members of the Nestolese Empire,
If, like us, you spend a fair percentage of your time on the internet, you’ve been bombarded with invitations to join the social networking site Facebook recently. The site, originally started for US college students, seems to have leapt the Atlantic in a big way over the last year, with more and more Brits using the service. Last month Facebook announced Platform, which allows anyone to build their own application within Facebook. The internet has been abuzz with commentary about why this is an amazing feat and a shrewd business move. As keen API users and creators, we were of course intrigued. We liked what we saw and last week we whipped up the Nestoria Flat Search application, as a way to search for property within Facebook. Why on earth would you want to use Facebook to search for your next home instead of coming to Nestoria directly? A few reasons. First of all, you get instant access to the same great relevantly sorted database of houses and flats to buy and rent that you would find on Nestoria. Secondly, it’s easy to share results with your friends (see screenshot below), which is ideal for flatsharers. Finally, if you want, when you do a search what you searched for is shown on your profile page. This means your friends can know you’re hunting for a new house or flat, and may be able to offer advice. That being said, there’s as yet no good way to implement the rich map experience we offer on Nestoria into the Facebook platform. No doubt the Facebookers are hard at work on continually making Platform better, and we’ll work to improve the experience in the coming months. Some screenshots for those of you who haven’t yet taken the FB plunge: Nestoria results in Facebook:
Please add the application, give it a try, and let us know what you think. We’ve also set up the Nestoria Users Group in Facebook as another channel for property searchers to let us know what they think of our efforts to make Nestoria the easiest way to find property in the UK.
If Facebook just isn’t your thing please remember that we also offer a full arsenal of other search tools. In closing, a bit of thanks. In getting this out so quickly we had the pleasure of working with Techlightenment (the same folks behind personal contact form service Contactify). I can highly recommend their help if you’re looking to have a Facebook app built quickly. Happy facebooking!Nestojans,
For those that don’t know OpenStreetMap (OSM), it’s a volunteer project to create a free editable map of the world. Obviously, mapping the entire world with volunteers like you and me isn’t a trivial project. Since starting a few years ago the OSMers have gained traction, and are slowly but surely growing the coverage and richness of data they have mapped. More and more volunteers have joined the effort, both gathering data, and developing clever tools and uses for the data. Initially founded in the UK, OSM is now going strong around the world. It’s a great success story of grass root effort.
Dearest Nestonauts!
This week is the one year anniversary of the launch of Nestoria in the UK! Hard to believe it’s only been a year. We’ve come a long way. For those that don’t recall when we originally launched, Nestoria had only about 50,000 listings and covered only London. There was no API, no tools for webmasters, a very limited set of local content, you couldn’t use the map to search, and our approach to relevancy was in it’s infancy. To celebrate our progress over the last year the Nestoria team decided to take an afternoon off last week and head to the centre of the world: Greenwich and the Prime Meridian.
Three hacks qualified for the Quasi-Official Nestoria Hack Contest:
* Hack #24: “Where to find the best second hand clothes?” - Our good friend Leo figured out which Oxfam shops are closest to pricey property. He put that on a Yahoo Map to produce a hit list for his wife, who is seeking deals on fashionable frocks. Very clever.
* Hack #65: “Pyzeta” - Angel and Daniel from Madrid created an application for a GPS-capable Nokia mobile that allows you to browser property listings around your current position. Source code and video demo are available. Fiendish.
* Hack #68: “Locality” - Dominic created an application that shows the relative quality of local councils on a Yahoo Map. We think it uses Nestoria data to determine average husing prices for the area and factors that into its scoring algorithm. Useful >and< fun.
The envelope please…
The winners are Angel and Daniel. Congratulations, lads! We will be in touch shortly to arrange delivery of your prize - a very sweet Garmin eTrex Vista Cx GPS device. We will program in the location of the Lokku office so you can come and visit the next time you are in London.
Furthermore - thanks to Yahoo and the BBC for hosting Hack Day. Several members of the Nestoria tech team were lurking around and were very impressed, indeed.
Dearest Nestofarians,
in heated anticipation of this week’s quasi-official Nestoria Hack contest (to be held at Yahoo! Hack Day) we’ve just upgraded our API to version 1.09. “What’s new?” you ask. First up, a friendly developer pointed out that we inexplicitly have never returned the number of bathrooms for a property (doh!), so we’ve added that. The bigger change is that we’ve added the ability to do JSON callbacks, a simple technique to make using JSON calls via javascript a bit easier. There’s a great discussion of the merits of this approach over on Yahoo’s Developer Network As always you can learn more over in the Nestoria API technical docs Enjoy, and happy hacking.Nestopians,
last week we pushed out a new feature which allows you to view properties in Google Earth. If you haven’t yet seen the amazing graphical display that is Google Earth, we can’t recommend strongly enough that you check it out. So how do you get Nestoria homes to buy and rent in Google Earth? Simple, at the top right of each search results page there’s a little blue button (next to the orange RSS button).
Nestoristas!
As some of you will know, this coming Saturday will be Yahoo! Hack Day here in London, and a few members of the Nestoria team will be on hand. But rather than just attending, we though it might be a bit of fun if we try to subvert the event and turn it into our own hack contest. As such, we’re delighted to present….*to be held at Yahoo! Hack Day
In addition, should you want it, you’ll also get a full profile of you and your darling little hack here on the Nestoria blog. You’ll join the company of such internet grandees and Nestoria interviewees as OpenStreetMap founder Steve Coast and digital commentator (and ex-Yahoo!) Prashant Agarwal. Who’s eligible: anyone at Yahoo! Hack Day including Yahoo! and BBC employees (but not Nestoria employees). Why you should participate: our API is good, the prize is good, and there’s something spiritually right about the little man hacking Hack Day. Also, your odds of winning are probably much better than your chance of winning one of the corporate prizes. Some project ideas from the Nestoria team:
- create a bot for Y! messenger that pretends to be an estate agent and serves up relevant search results for queries like “I want to find a flat in foo that costs less than bar”.
- save properties to Y! notepad or del.icio.us.
- mashup local news from BBC with local properties.
- mashup properties with questions about an area from Y! answers.
- Nestoria gives you geocoded properties, flickr gives you geocoded photos. Mix. Serve hot.
- use Y! horoscopes to determine if your potential new home has the right feng shui for you.
- Magically weave together profiles from Y! Music and flatshare listings from Nestoria to find a flatmate you’ll actually like.
- mash up finance news about the “impending housing crash” with property listings (BTW - slap a little Y! search marketing next to that, and you’ve got yourself a business)
Any one of these will be more than acceptable to win the prize. But of course the limit is your own imagination.
Muchas gracias to our amigos over at Yahoo! for hosting this event. We’ll see you there on Saturday.
Nestoriaks!
Today we once again take a bit of time to review recent changes we’ve made to the core algorithms that make Nestoria the simplest way to find houses and flats in the UK. As long time readers will recall from our past updates we collectively term these algorithms “Nestoria Rank”. First and foremost, we recently launched a big improvement to the technology we use to detect “duplicate” properties - when we get the same house from multiple sources. In the same way that we work hard to eliminate spam and expired listings, it is critical to correctly detect duplicates. Property searchers aren’t interested in seeing the same home multiple times. Unfortunately, it can be surprisingly hard for a computer to detect that different property descriptions from different sources are actually the same house. As an example, here’s a screenshot of a time in the past where we just weren’t getting it right:
- In terms of usability we’ve had very positive feedback on our sliders. More importantly we’ve seen from our internal metrics that the average user is now finding relevant homes in fewer pages. We of course continue to test new usability improvements all the time.
- We’ve increased the comprehensiveness of our database of property by adding new developments.
- We’ve greatly improved our API so that anyone can play with our database of over 650,000 listings.
Join the 