Oodle goes a twittering
Oodle has just plunged into the Twitter space big time, and the ramifications could be huge.
The Oodle concept plays on three fronts. First, posters to Oodle can have their listings automatically forwarded to their personal Twitter stream. Users have to opt-in and provide their Twitter credentials to Oodle, but that’s becoming pretty common these days with third party Twitter apps.
Oodle second approach is to push each and every one of its postings into a single Twitter stream. That’s right – tens of thousands of listing in the @oodle account. How can that possibly be useful to a user? Oodle CEO Craig Donato explained:
“We don’t expect anyone to actually follow that account. But there are an increasing number of third party Twitter apps that allow you to search your Twitter stream. So if someone looks for for an apartment or roommate in Dallas, the app will only show the relevant listings.”
Properly tagging listings will be key, Donato added. Most of all, it’s a “different way to syndicate our content through Twitter.”
The third direction won’t be live for another couple of weeks but it’s perhaps the most interesting of all. If you’re looking at a listing, either on the Oodle site or from within a social networking service such as Facebook or MySpace where Oodle already has a presence, you can push out a question to your friends and followers.
For example, let’s say you’re viewing a car listing and you want to hear if anyone has had experience with a particular dealer. You post the question and out it goes via your social media stream.
“It’s different than the usual way you see in social communities,” Donato explained, “where you’re conversing with people who are also looking at the listing. This is with friends who aren’t necessarily on the same page.”
Oodle will make it even easier to get the conversation going by providing prompt questions. So, someone looking at a job listing could click the option to ask “Does anyone know someone who works at this company?”
The user interface for this part of Oodle’s plan to conquer the Twitterverse hasn’t been finalized yet, Donato said.
Oodle is no stranger to Twitter. There are already a number of Twitter addresses for Oodle, including one for developers and CEO Donato himself (go to @CraigOodle).
