Investment Riches is part real estate brokerage, part social networking company that offers a free one-on-one consultation on real estate investing. The consultant can help you find the right market to invest in, find the right property or just build your portfolio. They also offer a social networking feature so like-minded investors can join together and, with the help of Investment Riches, get price discounts through bulk negotiation. All services are free for individual investors. There are 6,000 active members, many of whom participate in the forums and blogs. The free membership also grants members access to a real estate database and opportunities listings. Full members get the first look at new opportunities three days before the listing is made available to the general public. In order to gain full member status, you must be approved by the Investment Riches staff based on certain investment criteria.
Investment Riches has done a great job at using the Web to differentiate themselves from traditional real estate brokerages. They have built a community around their business by offering people unique value for free. Investors can utilize their database of statistics, seek advice from other investors in the forums and talk one on one with a consultant at an unbeatable price. One potential drawback is that full membership is limited to qualified investors. To gain access to all the site’s tools, you must apply for admission and wait until someone approves your application. However, casual investors and beginners can still get access as a limited member, which allows use of the forums, access to listings and profiles on the featured cities.
Website: www.investmentriches.com
Location: Las Vegas, NV
Type of Business: Real Estate Brokerage
Value for Investors: Free Consultation, Active Community Forums, Assistance in Bulk Negotiation, Social Networking
Labels: bulk negotiation, free real estate consulting, social networking
This week, Starbucks rolled out their new customer service site to mixed reviews. MyStarbucksIdea.com seeks to act as a social networking site for Starbucks customers, but falls short by a long double shot.The site allows users to interact through discussion boards, and to share ideas for ways the stores, products and company can be improved. Users vote on each other’s ideas, and then see the changes in action. It seems that in an effort to really learn their customer, Starbucks has engaged Web 2.0 with the age-old suggestion box and slapped it with the popular "social networking’". Wrong.
The 40-some odd "Idea Partners" describe their site by saying, “My Starbucks Idea is an online community dedicated to sharing and discussing ideas and allowing you to see how Starbucks is putting top ideas into action,” mentioning that issues specific to your Starbucks experience should still be mentioned in the Contact Us section of Starbucks.com.
So this site is for high-level, pie-in-the-sky ideas, right? As it turns out, not really: It’s actually a popularity contest! As the site says, “Everyone helps decide by voting. Ideas posted to the ‘Popular Ideas’ section of the website (determined by using an algorithm based on number of points, number of comments and recency of post) will be considered, but our Idea Partners may also choose ideas simply because they think they’re promising.” So, if you’ve got an idea, submit it—it’ll be up to the user community to determine the idea’s validity and relevance and vote it into popularity.
The site gets it right in its intention to be an arena of community discussion for consumers. Because I’m a big advocate of networking—and an even bigger advocate of brainstorming—the basic functions of this site may be useful for someone like me, who enjoys (nay, needs) her perfect daily double shot of espresso, with two inches of steamed soy, with soy foam on top, please. And, at $3.79 a pop (plus the occasional pastry. Okay, who am I kidding?)—my voice had better be heard.
But enough on this, I need to go finish my coffee.Labels: coffee, double shot, Idea Partners, MyStarbucks.com, social networking, Starbucks, suggestion box, web 2.0
