We know how important social networking is becoming in our daily lives. Drew Izzo, CMO of Roost.com, and I attended SocialMediaCamp this last Tuesday and learned how social networking sites are being integrating into businesses everywhere. From Twitter to LinkedIn to Facebook, the world is becoming connected.

Social Networking Sites

So I got a tweet this morning from Peter Cashmore at Mashable.com linking me to a post on their site titled “Social Networking Stats: Facebook and LinkedIn Surging in US” by Adam Ostrow.

MySpace might have established the category but Most-Networked-Executives according to Nielsen Online, they actually had a decline in unique visitors in June year-over-year (YOY). Now they only dropped about 300,000 unique visitors to 59.4M, but it was the first decline they have experienced in their incredible growth so far.

On the other end of the spectrum, up and coming social networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn saw substantial increases in their unique visitors. Facebook was up almost 14M YOY (77% growth) and LinkedIn was up more than 6M YOY (187% growth).

So why am I writing about this on a real estate blog? Well because I think real estate as a whole is playing a part in why this shift is happening.

MySpace was, is, and probably always will be thought of as a social networking site for Generation Y and Generation Z. It is more about sharing new pictures from the party you were at last weekend rather than networking for new customers.

Enter Facebook and LinkedIn. These sites introduced a lot of agents and brokers to the world of social networking for the first time. I remember late last year while I was still at Intero, a gentleman came to the training center to talk about LinkedIn and the place was packed. Everyone was not only interested in what LinkedIn was, but how they could possibly leverage it into their business. It gave agents a great reason to reach out to clients by adding them to their connections. It also provided them with a way to reach a ton of people quickly and efficiently, whether the message needed to be personalized or not.

Will these social networking sites prove critical in helping consumers find homes for sale or an agent? I think the jury is still out on that one but what I do know is that people that use these sites (myself included) are building sizeable networks and correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t a good network critical to a successful career in real estate?

Derek Overbey
Sr. Director of Partnership Strategy
Roost.com
derek.overbey@roost.com
Twitter – @doverbey<–>