Online news provider Pointcast has announced the addition of Real Estate Insider, a comprehensive library of breaking real estate news by category, to its site. Real Estate Insider became available for downloading Tuesday.

Pointcast is the Web's premiere provider of push technology, meaning that news is delivered to audiences. Traditional browsing methods, in contrast, require users to proactively search for the information themselves. Pointcast was originally launched in 1993 as a news provider that enabled users to customize the content delivered to their own computers, meaning they could choose which subjects would appear on their screens. The company added several industry "insiders," including health care, state and local government, banking, consumer products, utilities, and information technology, among others. The real estate insider link is Pointcast's 13th industry insider.

Pointcast's Real Estate Insider link divides the topic of residential real estate into three primary categories: News, Mortgage, and Associations; and offers further subdivisions of General, Legal, Legislative, Economic, Technology, and People. Clicking on any of those categories produces an instant search and list of relevant stories, many of which are provided by AgentNews. Other editorial content providers include Information Inc., the National Association of Realtors, The Washington Post, BusinessWire, PRNewswire, and Investor's Business Daily.

Peter Tafeen, RealSelect's vice president of business technology and former director of business development for Pointcast, led the effort to add a real estate category to Pointcast's already comprehensive news library. Pointcast plans to add a relocation channel, including MLS listings, to its site March 15. Tafeen says the Real Estate Insider soon will be placed on the "generic Pointcast" home page, so that every Pointcast user will be able to locate consumer-oriented real estate news quickly and efficiently.

While real estate news is nothing new to Pointcast -- the site has included real estate news since its inception, relying primarily on Reuters and Inman News -- this marks the first occasion that Pointcast has both greatly expanded and categorized its real estate news headlines, thanks to the forging of relationships with many more news providers. Real Estate Insider initially was intended for real estate professionals, but Pointcast soon realized the power of the consumer and decided to cater to both groups.

According to Tafeen, Pointcast is preparing to embark on a marketing campaign for Real Estate Insider, with hopes of linking its real estate news to "every real estate Web site out there," he says. Additional categories of real estate news are planned, including categories related to technology geared for the real estate industry, the financial impact of real estate, and real estate investments. More than 1 million people visit Pointcast each month, and 4 million people have downloaded Pointcast's software since the company's inception in 1993.

Published: January 29, 1998

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