End Of An Era

...And it's a long one, in Internet Years. I was the lead architect on AtlantaMLS.com, which is the original public listings web site for Georgia MLS. It was late 1994 when we started it and, as far as we could tell, it was the first MLS ANYWHERE to put their active listings online. This was years before the first web-based MLS; years before anyone used the word "portal". I mean, we had to write emulation software that pretended to be human - random pauses and all - in order to be able to download the data from the old dial-up character-based MLS system! And since 1994, I've been involved, in one way or another, with creating, hosting, maintaining AtlantaMLS.com - since 2000 under our own company, ListingWare. And we'd been doing it for FREE, in order to get exposure through their membership!

Now, due to a variety of reasons, Georgia MLS has decided to take everything in-house. They had created GeorgiaMLS.com a couple of years ago as a separate site and it had been run in parallel to AtlantaMLS.com. Yesterday, GAMLS delivered the news that they are combining the two sites. So, ListingWare is done with that service - and without so much as a "Thank You", I might add.

Well, as much as it bothers me to lose it, this just seems to dovetail perfectly with our new era at ListingWare! It's the era where we differentiate ourselves from "free" - how we're better than any free service you can get through an MLS or "free" broker-provided solution. It's the era where we show the value of ListingWare over other Real Estate web site and/or IDX providers.

You can get a preview of things at my example web site here - keep a close eye out and be ready to take advantage!