NEW YORK — We’ve all had amazing conversations on social media. And within a couple of hours or days they’re essentially gone.

Curaytor, a "conversation search engine" that launched today at Real Estate Connect New York City, aims to remedy that problem by curating discussions on social media sites, making them searchable and less ephemeral.

"There’s amazing information that’s disappearing," said Jimmy Mackin, a Facebook marketing expert who co-founded Curaytor with real estate tech consultant Chris Smith and developer Andrew Leafe.

Curaytor "finds the crevices within Facebook where there are relevant conversations," Mackin said.

For now, Curaytor is focused on three popular real estate-focused Facebook groups: "What should I spend my money on?" (4,182 members); "Raise the Bar in Real Estate" (2,263 members); and "Tech Support Group for Real Estate Agents" (4,591 members).  

In the future, Mackin and Smith said in an interview with Inman News at Real Estate Connect, they hope to bring in other groups and include content from Twitter and Google Plus.

Curaytor lets users search conversations in the three Facebook groups it covers by topic, company, source or user. Users can apply four filters — trending, popular, latest and staff picks — and results are served up by an algorithm that tags conversations based on the filters.

Screen shot of Curaytor’s home page.

It’s not all automatic. Some of the conversations in each filtered result category are highlighted by Mackin and Smith.

In the future, Smith said, others will be made administrators who can help provide the human element that’s important in determining what the most fruitful and relevant conversations actually are.


Jimmy Mackin

Curaytor users have profile pages on the site that presents their activity in the three Facebook groups — how many posts they’ve written, how many comments they’ve made and how many "likes" their posts (and their comments to posts) have received.

"Web 3.0 is not blog comments," Mackin said. "It’s social."

Until Curaytor, Mackin said, social search programs like Social Mention were static, filtering results by the things like the number of likes, retweets or plus-ones, but Curaytor is a "living, breathing thing."


Chris Smith

The launch of Facebook’s much-touted social search tool "Graph Search" this week took Curaytor by surprise, Smith said in a Facebook post. But Curaytor’s founders are unfazed, he wrote.

"See, when you build things for specific people, not for everyone, it’s always better," he said. "Everyone has a Ford, not everyone has a Porsche. Greatness is measured by how we handle adversity."

Show Comments Hide Comments
Sign up for Inman’s Morning Headlines
What you need to know to start your day with all the latest industry developments
By submitting your email address, you agree to receive marketing emails from Inman.
Success!
Thank you for subscribing to Morning Headlines.
Back to top
×
Log in
If you created your account with Google or Facebook
Don't have an account?
Forgot your password?
No Problem

Simply enter the email address you used to create your account and click "Reset Password". You will receive additional instructions via email.

Forgot your username? If so please contact customer support at (510) 658-9252

Password Reset Confirmation

Password Reset Instructions have been sent to

Subscribe to The Weekender
Get the week's leading headlines delivered straight to your inbox.
Top headlines from around the real estate industry. Breaking news as it happens.
15 stories covering tech, special reports, video and opinion.
Unique features from hacker profiles to portal watch and video interviews.
Unique features from hacker profiles to portal watch and video interviews.
It looks like you’re already a Select Member!
To subscribe to exclusive newsletters, visit your email preferences in the account settings.
Up-to-the-minute news and interviews in your inbox, ticket discounts for Inman events and more
1-Step CheckoutPay with a credit card
By continuing, you agree to Inman’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

You will be charged . Your subscription will automatically renew for on . For more details on our payment terms and how to cancel, click here.

Interested in a group subscription?
Finish setting up your subscription
×