Web 2.0 and The Search For Boston Condos

The Boston condo market is currently undergoing a defining period of development and growth. Alongside this change, the resources available to consumers to help navigate the market are also evolving into much more sophisticated tools. While the condo market owes many of its advancements to city sponsored renewal projects such as the Big Dig, the innovations in available resources are due to the Internet and the emergence of Web 2.0. The premise behind the newly termed "Web 2.0" is that the Internet is no longer a place where visitors only jump from site-to-site reading information, but rather they are now able to interact with both websites and other users, utilizing the Internet as one large computing platform, and consequently adding value to each individuals unique experience. Boston Condo Group is proud to announce the development and integration of Web 2.0 dynamics into its website, bostoncondogroup.com, giving buyers and sellers an improved arena of tools and possibilities that will change the way they search, navigate, and gain knowledge of the condo market.

Up until now, most real estate websites have been able to offer nothing more then brochureware, meaning they display properties and buildings with information equivalent to a simple paper brochure. When maps have been presented on a page, it has only been to show the location of a specific property. Boston Condo Group has taken this function to the next level by integrating Google maps and API technology on each of their building pages. There are several hundred condo buildings of at least medium size in the city, but the problem is that most people have never heard of them or are not familiar with their exact locations. Visitors often find real estate sites after performing a broad search based on a city area, or after searching for a buildings that they are familiar with. When a visitor views a building's page on bostoncondogroup.com, they will be able to see the building pinpointed on a Google map, and then they will have the opportunity to "Display Nearby Buildings". Using this function triggers the interactive map, and all condo developments in the area will pop up in the form of red pushpins. The user has the ability to click on each of the pushpins, bringing up the name and picture of each development. They are also given the option to go to that building's specific page where they can view additional pictures and learn more about the development.

Boston Condo Group also makes it easy for their content to be tagged and shared among larger networks. In the past, when an individual found a page with useful information, they were able to bookmark that page so that they would be able to relocate it later. Web 2.0 has flourished social networking communities, meaning that Internet users now have the ability to bookmark pages on a network much bigger then just a group of people who use one individual computer. They can now tag them in an online social community where pages can be evaluated by other users, shared with millions of people, commented and discussed, and retrieved from any computer that simply has an Internet connection. Bostoncondogroup.com makes it easy for site visitors to participate in social networks by integrating simple "add to" buttons for 4 of the major communities, "del.icio.us", "digg", "Google", and "Yahoo".