Editor & Publisher
The Boston Globe has launched a stand-alone iPhone app that provides access to real estate listings, photos and news in Massachusetts and New England. The free app allows users to search by location or use the phone’s GPS capabilities to display homes on the market or open houses nearby.
According a news release announcing the app, some of the features enable users to:
- View listings on a map or in a list.
- Save listings and create e-mail alerts for favorite searches.
- Upload and store photos and notes about properties.
- Refine searches by property type, square footage, price and recent listings.
- Browse homes within the neighborhoods of Boston and Cambridge.
Boston.com General Manager Lisa DeSisto indicated in the news release that the app is aimed at home buyers and renters and will also enhance the “effectiveness of listings on Boston.com for local Realtors.”
In an interview with Megan Garber at Nieman Journalism Lab, Bob Kempf, vice president of digital for the Globe and Boston.com, said that one of the goals of the app is to grab enough audience in the mobile space to provide added value for advertisers on the desktop Web and mobile platforms.
“While it’s still early on — and ‘really early to tell what the rate of adoption is going to be here,’ Kempf notes — ‘I would like to see us be a dominant, if not the dominant, local real estate application that’s being used in the Boston market.’ The same kind of penetration that Boston.com’s real estate section has had, Kempf says, he’d like to see the new app have in the mobile space. ‘We think it’s a great place to start.’ “
