Asking the Right Questions

More times than you care to remember, I am sure. Unfortunately, that is not the right question. 2018 is the year to begin to ask the right questions and to advance to the next phase in the distribution of listing data. It is time to move toward control, specific licensing and eventual monetization.

Syndication is distribution. As it is currently deployed in the industry, syndication is the ability to conveniently distribute listing information to a multitude of destinations of choice, having only to enter the listing information once, into one data repository (your MLS). Speed, convenience, choice, who could ask for anything more?

Syndication is an industry evolution, not an industry revolution. The first serious syndicator of listing data was REALTOR.com, which syndicated to AOL, Alta Vista, Lycos (remember Alta Vista and Lycos?) and a few other sites.

Realtor.com was “syndicating” listings in the 1990s. No one referred to Realtor.com’s distribution of MLS data as syndication at the time, but today, that is exactly what we would call it.