[TYPO3-UG US] US Marketing Plan

[Dimitri Tarassenko]

Greg,

On 10/11/05, Gregory Remington <greg at mediatech.net> wrote:

> We could start with what we have here. Churches and non profits. What
> other specific industries does TYPO3 do well in? Who is our user base
> here? How could we sell TYPO3 to the realestate market for example. Are
> there any good real estate sites to demo?

I've had quite a bit of experience with web applications for real
estate market (http://www.metroresidenceguide.com). The only way you
could offer a U.S. Realtor something comparable to what they can get
for free or very cheap from their franchise (Century 21 and the likes)
or from Realtor.com is to build something that will tap into the MLS
(multiple listing system) for their current listings. I've written an
MLS-integrated app about 2 years ago (RETS-based), and believe me,
it's no fun, even considering I only had to deal with 1 MLS vendor and
pretty static metadata. And, even though RETS is quasi-standard in
real estate transaction data a lot of MLS vendors have their
proprietory protocols.

All in all, I highly doubt anyone (me included) would be ready to
write a TYPO3 extension that would interface to MLS and publish it
under GPL. Too much work involved because there is too much ambiguity
on the other side (MLS Servers).

And I don't think you TYPO3 can compete in this market without it.
Realtors (let's say, _Georgia_ realtors ;) are typically not very
computer savvy and most of them will not go for updating their
listings in MLS AND the website. Most of them are even too lazy/cheap
to subscribe to 2 MLS systems where the markets overlap (Atlanta metro
has Georgia MLS and First MLS).

I would certainly look more at non-profits (membership, donations,
newsletters etc.). Most of what we did with TYPO3 was in the
non-profit market and TYPO3 is quite competitive there.

--
Dimitri Tarassenko