As Heather from Trulia mentioned, they’re doing away with the nofollow tag, so that’s a moot point.

The question is whether blog networks/platforms are good for agents. I guess my answer to that would be what the agent’s goal in blogging is. There are only three reasons to blog, when you get down to it: Pleasure, Fame, and Money.

I believe anyone blogging for pleasure (like me for instance) probably doesn’t care one way or the other.

Those blogging for Fame should probably do it on their “own site” just in case they do get famous somehow.

The Money-bloggers, however, really have to balance the revenues (both present and future) vs. “ownership”. Since I view blogging for agents as a form of advertising, it really is a question of reach vs. control. For now, I just can’t see what the value of an “owned” blogsite that gets 30 visitors a month is to a Money blogger when they can tap into millions of visitors at one of the network sites.

-rsh

The whole No Follow issue is another concern as well. Trulia wants agents to put all their gadgets on their sites with a real link to boost their search engine rankings, but are a little stingy when it goes the other way. Basically telling Google I do not trust this site. Now is that a fair way to treat the ones that are boosting them??

@ chris and pasadenaviews – Trulia Blogs are still in a private beta. We’ve invited/provided access to a limited number of Trulia Voices users, friends, family etc. We are open to giving beta access if you are interested in taking a look and providing feedback. If you want access, please email rudy or me… heather [at] trulia – and we’ll give you the access code.

@foundbydesign – blog content will be dofollow, so agents can absolutely link back to their blogs and get the links that you refer to. We’ve heard loud and clear how important this issue is to agents and want to make sure we are building an experience that proves the ROI to the agent, while building value to consumers and making Trulia a better overall experience!

Have a great weekend all.

The reason I would advise ActiveRain over Trulia would be the No Follow issue. If Trulia will enforce no follow tags, they agents contributing are only building the Trulia brand, not their own. But with Active Rain, they can blog and get back links to their own websites which makes it a fair tradeoff for the agent and the blog site.

I personally blog at ActiveRain using summaries of what I post at my own website. ActiveRain does get a large amount of traffic, even consumer traffic and if my summary gets their attention, they end up on MY site rather than swimming with all the competition!

Just food for thought.

http://www.foundbydesign.com