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That’s exactly what San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom wanted to find out to support the launch of DataSF.org. The new site publishes data from the City & County of San Francisco and provides access to everything from police records to restaurant inspection reports. With DataSF the city aims to increase the transparency of government data and to foster innovation in the bay area.

And so when Mayor Newsom wanted to find out which data should be included on the site, he turned to the Trulia Voices community with his inquiry:

The Mayor's question received answers from almost 100 members of the Trulia Voices community. 58% of the responses came from California residents and 31% from those who reside in San Francisco. Though the answers were wide-ranging, there were definitely some commonalities among the requests for information.

Crime data, proximity to points of interest and school information topped the list on a national level. These features were important to San Francisco residents as well, however those in SF differentiated themselves from the group at large with numerous requests for information about access to transportation and street parking, indicating a clear need to navigate the city with ease. San Francisco dwellers were also more likely than others to request information about parks, verifying the outdoorsy culture that is prevalent in the city.

 "Since the launch of DataSF.org a couple weeks ago, we've had nearly 10,000 visitors from 104 countries and every state in the nation,” said the Mayor, “Thank you for taking the time to suggest ways to improve San Francisco and what additional data you want to see on the site."

From the looks of it, the Mayor has taken these suggestions seriously. DataSF.org already boasts crime statistics, transportation data as well as information about recreation and park lands. They’ve also already tackled another common request from San Francisco residents:

"We are working city departments to make as much non-confidential government data available on DataSF as possible,” he said. “With that in mind, I am pleased to announce that we have just released the most requested dataset on DataSF - our street sweeping schedule. We look forward to seeing how this and other data is used in ways to make government work better for all of us."

Today is National Breast Cancer Awareness Day, part of the larger Breast Cancer Awareness month.  Breast cancer affects many women and their families; a woman has a 1 in 8 risk of developing breast cancer during her lifetime.  And that’s exactly why Trulians are doing our part to raise breast cancer awareness and to support Susan G Komen for the Cure.

For every Trulia Pro premium marketing subscription purchased through the end of the month, Trulia will donate the first month’s fee to Susan G Komen for the Cure.  Just use code PINK at billing to make sure your money is donated to this fantastic organization.  In addition, Trulia has donated on-site ad space to the cause and has launched an employee donation program.

Other ways you can do your part to support breast cancer awareness and help find a cure:

• Donate to a national cancer non-profit or to a local cancer treatment center
• Encourage women to check with their doctors about when to begin regular mammograms - then to have them!
• Write your member of Congress to say that early detection and treatment programs be included in any national health care legislation.

I’m happy to say that my mom is a breast cancer survivor.  Let’s all do our part to make sure more women are survivors, too.

Agents: What other causes do you support in your local area?

We are very excited today to announce the addition of a new section to our Trulia Voices community: Trulia Guides

The Trulia Voices community has been helping consumers and agents alike to make better real estate decisions by providing answers to specific questions, and offering a large volume of blog posts covering the real estate market and the real estate transactions. Trulia Guides is joining the Trulia Voices group of products to offer simple how-to advice for every step of the real estate process.


Even though we'd like to take credit for this idea, we have to admit that how-to guides was something that our consumers (and agents) conceived first and asked for our help to make it happen. They wanted a place where they can read step by step info on what to do and what not to do, so they feel more educated and empowered during the whole process.

What we did is to create a dream team of writers and journalists who have been covering a wide variety of real estate topics for many years, and we worked with them to create a list of how-to guides. Today, we are launching four topics: Home Buying, Home Selling, Financing, and Rentals.

This is just the beginning. Our plans include not only to expand the topics that we are covering, but also to increase the number of writters and allow a few selected Trulia Voices community members to also contribute. But more on this to come later :)

Spend some time reading through Trulia Guides (it is really interesting, promise!) and don't forget to comment on this blog post with your feedback! We'd love to hear what you think about the current guides and what topics you'd like to see us adding.

Enjoy!

Trulia is excited to introduce our ‘Trulia Mayor’ program, a new initiative that will help strengthen and expand the Trulia Voices community including nearly 400,000 real estate professionals.

Trulia Mayors are great social media role models and innovators, and will represent the opinions of real estate professionals in various Trulia efforts.  Mayors will attend frequent roundtable meetings, get sneak peeks of upcoming projects and will provide their input in content quality matters on Trulia Voices. Additionally, Trulia Mayors will be participating in various PR and marketing efforts, such as co-hosting local events and co-authoring newsletters and articles, to spread their knowledge and provide expert advice to consumers and professionals alike. Bottom line - it's pretty cool.

You can identify the Trulia Mayors in the Trulia Voices community by a special Mayor badge. They will also continue participating on the Trulia Voices community by asking and answering questions and blogging. The Trulia Mayors will be at your assistance when you have questions or concerns about Trulia or the Trulia Voices community, and they will be happy to share their experiences and knowledge.

The inaugural Trulia Mayors are five real estate professionals who have led by example within the Trulia Voices community, and we’re thrilled that each of them accepted their volunteer Mayoral appointments!  It’s a great start to a program that will eventually include a representative from each state.

So who are they?  Let us introduce you!

Josh Boggs (San Antonio, TX) – Owner of Exposed Homes – Trulia Pro
Josh moved to San Antonio in 2000 and has flourished in his new found home.  Having a strong background in financial management, consulting and multi-family property management, residential real estate consulting was inevitably waiting for him right around the corner.  Believing wholeheartedly about reviving what is now considered a long lost art in today’s business world, Josh has brought his passion for helping people, valuable experience, sense of humor and enjoyment into his real estate career to hopefully remind his clients and potential clients that customer service is still alive and kicking in his domain.  He now owns and controls the marketing company eXposed Homes located at Keller Williams and are barreling through their 3rd year of operation.

Maureen Francis (Birmingham, MI) – Associate Broker at SKBK Sotheby’s International Realty –Trulia Pro – 2008 Trulia MVP
As a top producing Realtor in Birmingham, Michigan, she, and her husband, Dmitry Koublitsky, have been selling residential real estate in some of Metro Detroit's most affluent suburbs since 2001.  The couple met in Ukraine, where Maureen worked as a consultant on projects for the US government, The World Bank and The United Nations, after serving in the first group of US Peace Corps volunteers in the former Soviet Union.  

Maureen and Dmitry have built much of their business through technology, by using the web to help them to unite buyers with sellers.  Maureen was recently recognized by the Women's Council of Realtors for her use of technology, and she has received awards for blogging over the years.  Maureen blogs at www.miOaklandCounty.com.


Deborah Madey (Rumson, NJ) – Broker/Owner of Penninsula Realty – Trulia Pro – 2008 Trulia MVP
Deborah is a social media enthusiast with more than 2700 comments in Trulia Voices.  See her Trulia profile here: http://www.trulia.com/profile/DeborahMadeyNewJersey/

Alan May (Evanston, IL) –  Realtor at Coldwell Banker – 2008 Trulia MVP
Alan brings a casual sense of humor to his postings (as you can tell from his ever-changing Elvis-inspired icons), here on Trulia and has has been a regular contributor to Trulia Voices since 2007 which lead to him becoming a Trulia MVP for 2008. Additionally, Alan has contributed to several other real estate related sites over the past few years.

 Alan has been a Realtor with one of the top Coldwell Banker offices in the Chicago area for almost 10 years, and has been consistently an award-winning agent, as well as one of the top producers in his area. He's a low-key agent, and views himself more as a consultant, than a salesman.

Carl Medford (Fremont, CA) – Agent at Windermere – Trulia Pro
With the motto of, “Helping You Write The Next Chapter In Your Life,”™ Carl is one of the "next generation" of Web-based REALTORS.  Carl typically transforms any local coffeehouse into an office; meeting with clients in any location and conducting business while enjoying the best coffee available! Instead of focusing on a specific neighborhood, Carl has earned the distinction of being a "Regional Expert," tracking trends and critical information in multiple markets, thus bringing the broadest possible expertise and service to his clients. 
 
In addition to being a REALTOR, Carl is a licensed general contractor and also owns "The Next Stage," a fully professional and accredited home staging company. Lastly, Carl has developed “The Ultimate Home Buying Experience,™”. He is featured weekly in “Real Estate Reality” in the Real Estate section of the San Leandro Times and Castro Valley Forum newspapers.

San Francisco’s mayor Gavin Newsom, recently unlocked city data, giving us access to everything from police records to restaurant inspection reports and even lists of every street tree planted in San Francisco (and when!).   It’s all part of the recently launched DataSF.org, and he wants our help with this effort.

In an effort to assist home buyers, sellers and residents, he’s now asking the Trulia Voices community:





When deciding where to live, what local information do you want at your fingertips?








His office will be tracking your input closely – so make your voice heard! Not only will your answers help the Mayor work towards a more transparent and open government, but it will also create new job opportunities as people come up with ideas on how they can best use this never before available information to create new products and services.

Hopefully other government officials will take the lead from the White House and Mayor Newsom to adopt this open government policy and allow the citizens to innovate away!

Have you found yourself in our Find a Pro directory yet? Have you been wondering what’s behind the results and why you show up where you do? If so, read on and set your mind at ease – all will be explained.

You can search for professionals within our directory by:

Location – Our location search looks at the primary location in all member profiles. If you want to show up for a search in Orlando Florida, make sure that location is the first one listed on your profile page. Subsequent locations don’t affect the results and zip code searches won’t bring up results for the corresponding city – e.g. a search in zip 95616 won’t bring up results for Davis, CA. The opposite is true however – a search in Davis, CA will bring up results for all associated zip codes.

Keyword – Our keyword search checks all fields in all Trulia profiles to find possible matches. Whether you’re a relocation expert, or a short sale specialist, take care to include all the relevant information you can about yourself and your business in your profile.

Type of professional – As you would expect, this checks the professional type listed in each member’s profile. Make certain that you’re listed correctly as an Agent, Mortgage Broker or Lender or a Property Manager so you show up when you should, and take note that if you are a broker, you will also appear in the agent search results.

Once results are returned for a particular search, they are ordered based on the following criteria:

Total number of contributions – This criterion is designed to reward members who are always on top of their game and frequently provide advice and start discussions. Contributions include questions, answers, blog posts, and comments.

Community appreciation – The more Thumbs Up (useful) votes and Best Answer Awards you receive from other community members, the more likely it is that you will appear higher within the results.

Frequency of participation – This helps members who are consistently active appear higher and prevents a power user who no longer contributes from hogging the spotlight long after he or she has left.

Once these three criteria are checked, they form a score which determines the order in which the results will appear. However, please note that not all criteria are of equal value. In fact ‘Community Love’ has the highest value to ensure that members who contribute quality content get the spotlight.

So there you have it – the secret in our Find a Pro sauce. We hope we’ve given you ample information so you can take charge and truly affect your placement within our directory. Please be sure to share any questions or feedback you have with us.

We’d also like to extend a big thanks to Jim Walker for all his suggestions about our search results and to everyone else who shared their opinions as well.

 

 

It’s well known that home buyers who are looking for homes online want photos - people like pictures!  Whether they’re searching for homes on Trulia’s main site or on our iPhone application for real estate, they want photos.  More photos.  Bigger photos.  You get the idea.

Real estate agents have long known that people love photos, so they typically make sure to make lots of photos available for the listings they represent.  At Trulia, we strive to make it easier for agents to present their listings in the most pleasing way possible, and we’ve just made this easier.  Now, if you’re the listing agent for a particular listing, you can easily add photos or re-order photos (to make sure, for example, that the cover photo is the most eye-catching of them all).

It’s easy to try out the new functionality.  First, access your My Listings page (if you don’t already have a Trulia account, you’ll be prompted to create one).  Then, for any listing on your page, select from the drop-down menu as per the screenshot below.  (If you don’t yet have listings on this page, you can also add them here).

Next, you can edit photos from this page.  Add photos (as many as you’d like!) by uploading them from your computer or just entering the URL if the photo is already posted elsewhere online.  Delete any photos you don’t like.  Or, using simple “drag and drop” functionality, move the photos around — into the order you’d like.  You can also add captions to the photos.

Best of all?  This is all free.  You just need to be the listing agent for listings on Trulia.

We hope you like this new functionality.  As always, if you have comments or questions, please let us know.