So I signed up for my ActiveRain profile today. First impressions? Meh. Not that impressive.
ActiveRain bills itself as a social networking specifically for the real estate community and promises to help real estate professionals promote their business on the Internet. Members can do this by creating and sharing a personalized profile within the network.
Beyond creating a profile however, I couldn't figure what else I was supposed to do with the site. But then again I've never really understood the whole MySpace craze either, so perhaps I'm missing something here. There does seem to be a way to collect "points" by inviting associates or promoting your profile on your blog, which ostensibly results in you getting a higher "ranking". To what end, I'm not sure.
I do believe social networking has its place; like finding old school mates, or looking for a job. I believe it even has a place in business. But compared to the feature set on a site like MerchantCircle, ActiveRain seems woefully underpowered. Granted, the site bills itself in "early Beta phase" – but this is hardly an excuse. Bringing a product to market that is a) incomplete and b) broken (I got a number of error pages in the signup process) does little to inspire me.
I'll keep an eye on ActiveRain as it rolls out new features, but it falls fall short of recommendation at this time.
More on Active Rain from The Phoenix Real Estate Guy
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