Downstream IDX

You know by now that I simply cannot write a straight-up corporate marketing piece. A blog after all, is a concept born out of the term “weblog”, which by definition is an online diary of sorts. The blog, once innocent, has since been turned into a less-than-subtle tool for corporate America to push their wares in paragraph form. I learned recently that there are now what are called content farms that operate in the blogosphere for the giant brands out there in order to sell copy (blog posts, articles, tweets, FB posts) that will benefit a brand. I love capitalism, but wow.

I will just pledge to you that everything here is 100% sincere. You’ll read no fluff from us here at Solid Earth. I used to write fluff for a living. This is really a blog. The online Solid Earth diary. No editorial process. Type. Submit. Which means you sometimes have to suffer through my “diary” to get to the information. Sorry. I’m the guy with the admin password.

So this week Lauren and I were in Charleston, personally launching our newest product: Downstream IDX. Here’s an actual site using it. The demo sessions went really well, as expected. We entertained about 175 members over two days and got a lot of traction with subscriptions. Charleston Staff was happy, the members got something new and we left with the feeling that we’d done yet another thing that would demonstrate value to a great, loyal client.

As Solid Earthlings, you now have a new IDX product to offer your members. This is very important. There are dozens of IDX options for agents and brokers and the functionality and price are widely varied. We did a great amount of research before committing to this project and you only need to glance at Downstream IDX and see that we’ve done something significant. I pose that we’re evening the arms race with the big national names in real estate searching. We set out to give our clients an offering that would make their websites look as impressive and well-developed as anything else out there.

Look at it from a broker’s perspective. Do they need a website? Yes. Do they need a property search on that site? Most definitely. Then, if you’re going to invest in an IDX product you want the “look and feel” to allow the consumer to leave Zillow, Trulia or Realtor.com and not get user interface whiplash when they land on something local. A beautiful design is so important. It communicates legitimacy. A poor design communicates ignorance. Downstream IDX is beautiful and functional and we’re very proud.

I think we’ve done something big in releasing Downstream IDX. I hope you do too.