Hotpads

For Thing #18, I was asked to explore a web 2.0 tool, from a list of Web 2.0 award winners. I love real estate and was happy to find that category listed. I had already played around with zillow.com, so I decided to explore hotpads.com. This site was user friendly and easy to maneuver. It has listing of houses for sale, for rent and in foreclosure. You can search by zip code or city, state. One nice feature was the map view. Once you searched, a map would show the properties that matched your criteria. This was great for seeing where things were within a certain city or area. Also you could click and drag the maps which was a nice feature. And it worked quickly, there is nothing I hate more than a website that is slow. The one thing I didn't like about the site was that it didn't give a lot of extra information, like the value of the property. So in conjunction with zillow.com, this could be a great tool for those on a house hunt. Hotpads.com did link to other sites that had more information, so that was helpful.

In a library setting I think the only way we would be able to use it would be in customer service. When someone asked to see houses for sale or apartments it would be a great tool to use. On just the main map view a customer would be able to see the different apartment in an area, be able to compare location and cost among other things.