The Qube Exchange

It is with much excitement that we unveil several new features and products that we’ve been working on over the past couple of months. We’ve been building up to this point since our initial test site launch back in September and we are finally at the point where we are ready for the world to take a peek.

When we first took the wrapper off of Propertyqube, we took it off knowing that our initial release was just the first stepping stone to showing you what we would ultimately want to deliver. We strongly believe in helping professionals build their own brand and wanted to create a community that was truly local, not just one that touts to be local. Along with that, the phrase “PropertyLife” (in our tag line) was released back in September but until now, it didn’t really mean anything. Well next week, PropertyLife will become more clear!

Stay tuned for more details! If you are not part of our blog network, you should become part of it. It will come into play for this launch.

Over the past couple of months we have been working tirelessly on several new features/products based on all the great feedback we constantly get from you! We are excited to announce the big day is coming soon and we will launch them all next week. These features will change Propertyqube as we know it and will start to show our longer term strategy of who we want to become!

Stay tuned….

We talk to lots of people throughout the industry and we always get the question, “What’s Propertyqube working on next?” I think when we first launched Propertyqube, we took a very hush hush strategy but lately, we’ve been taking a lot more of an anti-stealth kind of approach. At the end of the day, success is achieved based on execution of your plans and ideas. So with that, you’ll be hearing more and more about the products and features we’re working on a lot earlier in the development cycle.

So what IS Propertyqube working on? Well over the past month, we’ve been focused on the launch of User Home Pages and refining a bunch of other pages throughout our platform to get the message about who we are across more effectively. The User Home Pages are in early beta and so you can expect some tweaks in the coming months as we learn more about what you want to see when first logging in.

As we try to create some of the most comprehensive profiles in the industry to set you apart from the crowd, we are now working on a way for Realtors to link their profile up to their listings flowing through Google Base. We have ideas on how we want to show these listings in your profile (think widget or a dedicated page) but we want to hear from you! Feel free to drop a comment or email us with your thoughts on how to most effectively show your listings off!

Here at Propertyqube, we love when we get feedback from our members and when we do, we work furiously to incorporate it into our network. Based on some of the feedback we received in talking with all of you, we thought it was necessary to spruce up a couple of pages in our network, most notably, user profiles!

We are happy to say we just released new profiles along with a new join now page! You’ll see lots of other changes here and there but these are the two most notable changes. Go check em out! of course, let us know what you think.

Profile shot:

Join page:

We’re doing a little early summer cleaning up and hitting a few pages and processes to make them more appealing and easier to use.

For starters, we are hitting the user profile page. We like the information our user profiles contain but the information widgets need to be shuffled around a bit. Along with that, we are applying a more appealing design. The second change you will see relates to the “invite a connection” page. These pages will be more intuitive with a much better design. You’ll also see a different “Join Now” page.

We plan on releasing these enhancements over the next week or two and we hope you like them! Feel free to drop us a note if you want us to consider anything and let us know if you want to have a sneak peek at the new designs!

With the launch of User Home Pages last week, we are thrilled with the feedback and results we have already started to see. Your new User Home Page is the jumping off point when you log in to Propertyqube. It’s the “bring it all together” page that enables you to get a great glimpse into your network within Propertyqube. One of the great things about this User Home Page includes the ability for you to DISTRIBUTE your blog throughout our entire blog network to the people who matter.

So how does it work? When you JOIN Propertyqube, you have the ability to feed your already existing blog into our blog network using RSS. It takes about 15 seconds to setup. After logging in or joining, simply click on “My Blog” in the second navigation bar, click on “Import Your Existing Blog,” paste in your RSS feed url and choose a category for your blog entries (ie: local community info, home buying advice, etc). The location is defaulted to your sign up location but feel free to change it if you live and blog in separate places. That’s it! It really is that simple.

So you may be asking yourself what happens next?
Well every time you blog, we’ll automatically pull in your entry and distribute it throughout our blog network and site. This means it gets hosted on our main BLOGS page and gets distributed to every single User Home Page located in the city and state you chose in the blog import sign up process. Talk about hyper local distribution! I personally discovered a couple of local New York City blogs.

Need another reason to import your blog?
When we import your blog entries, we import the entry complete with links to your blog. When users click on the title of your blog entries, they are sent directly to your blog…so you realize the increased traffic and visitors experience YOUR brand.

So go try it out! Join our fast growing blog network and let us know what you think!

Here’s an example of my User Home Page:

(click to view larger image)

It’s been a hectic couple of weeks over here at Propertyqube but we all seemed to get through it alive. As you know, we have been experiencing some technical problems, all related to our hosting company. We were humming right along and before we knew it, service started deteriorating and our site started experiencing downtime. We decided it was time to pull the plug on them.

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been busy with getting a new hosting environment up and running and transferring our infrastructure over. We are happy to say we are 99% complete and back better than ever! Our site is faster than ever before and we are excited to announce some much needed functionality in beta, accessible to all through your main profile page!

Today, we released a snazzy page that ties together everything you do on Propertyqube. From the groups you converse in, to the local conversations happening around you, to the local blogs in your area and the photos being uploaded by your network. You got it…USER HOME PAGES are now live in beta!

The idea around our new User Home Page is to give you an easy way of staying up to date with everything going on around you in the Propertyqube community. Here’s what you can expect to find:

-Favorite Blogs: All the recent entries from your Propertyqube Favorite Blogs now flow right to your home page. If you haven’t favorited any just yet, the widget won’t show up.

- Local Blog Network: Have a local Real Estate Blog? Distribute it to a targeted audience. When you choose to create or feed a blog into our network, your blog is fed to everybody’s User Home Page in the state you localize your blog within. It’s great for the blogger (wider distribution) and better for the user (local content they can discover and favorite).

- Group Activity and Local Conversations: Belong to a group or two? All the recent activity in the groups you belong to flows to your user home page. We also have a widget that brings in the local conversations happening in our general Conversation Forums. This gives you an easier way to stay up on the conversations going on…all from one centralized place!

- Photos: There’s nothing better than a photo stream! Any time a connection uploads a new photo to their profile, it appears in your User Home Page Photo Stream! It’s just another way to discover the cool projects and local community photos being uploaded to Propertyqube on a daily basis.

So go check it out! Go to your main profile and click on the link that reads “Get a sneak peek at our new user home page.” We hope you like it!

As always, we want to hear from you! Don’t hesitate to send any feedback our way.

Drum roll please……Steve Belt!

Steve has been an incredible evangelist of our community. He has been instrumental in refining functionality by giving us his candid feedback on how the user experience could be made better. He is super active on Propertyqube and we see home buyers and sellers who seek advice benefit from the great guidance he gives time and time again (check out his profile for a complete view of his contributions). This is why he is part of the Propertyqube Elite Huddle!

Congratulations, Steve!

You can check out Steve’s profile and connect with him HERE.

Growth on our network is really starting to pick up! Here are a couple of quick charts showing traffic growth since our test site launch.

(click for larger image)

This will only accelerate as we get the word out about our product. More importantly, we are collecting feedback as usual and we have some really cool product enhancements / new products we are working on. Stay tuned!

Today I posted a blog post on my personal blog about a new group we are forming. The name of the group is called Propertyqube Elite Huddle and it’s a group for those active and elite members of our community. You can read more about it here. We are looking for Propertyqube Elites’s in most major cities. If you think you are up for it, shoot an email to davidbethoney@propertyqube.com.

What’s the grand idea?
Propertyqube is a network being built to bring together professionals and consumers in one community experience.

The value is two fold: Professionals are able to promote themselves utilizing a host of different tools including blogging, giving advice, creating a group, hosting client written recommendations and much more. A single profile ties all of this together to make a great pitch to future clients. We take care of the SEO and get you ranked high in search engines so you can focus on what you do best.

The second value proposition is for consumers. Consumers have a great way to find great professionals, discover local content (your blog), get advice about issues they’re currently experiencing, look for their next home or apartment, recommend professionals they can vouch for and much more.

So how do I experience the true value propositions outlined above? Here’s some simple steps you can take:

1. Rather than post testimonials that you’ve been using for years, ask a recent client to join Propertyqube and recommend you! There’s nothing better than a referral, especially a referral from someone who’s directly connected to you. Not only that, you’ll be able to keep close contact with your past clients and build long-term relationships as you check out their blog, browse through their photos and comment on their home improvement projects.

2. Invite a couple of colleagues a day to join your personal real estate network. The more connections you have, the wider your services are distributed throughout Propertyqube.

3. Make it a point to give consumer advice in Propertyqube Conversations, at least a couple of times a week. Active buyers and sellers have benefited hugely from professionals giving advice. We’ve even had buyers and sellers get in touch with professionals as a result of conversations on Propertyqube. The advice you give is brought into your profile to be displayed in front of everyone.

4. Network! Join a group of interest and stay up on the conversations happening. Like Technology? why not join RE Tech, a group to discuss new tools relevant to the industry. Have a question about Marketing? Get advice from the many professionals in Marketing Yourself! Are you part of an HOA? Create a group and invite the rest of the association to join it. You don’t need to wait for that monthly meeting to discuss what’s important to your community.

5. We all have blogs. Why not join our National Blog Network? As we build up functionality, we’ll distribute your blog to more and more hyper local spots on Propertyqube. Plus, we send people directly to your blog so you realize increased traffic and better your SEO.

Check out some of the great professional profiles we’ve seen around the community!

Steve Belt

Judi Bryan

Kristal Kraft

Jim Walker

Chris and Maria Jeantet

Colleen Kulikowski

Join here!

-Dave