The duo that built up a real estate brand around an alternate spelling to Fahrenheit’s counterpart have split up, with one of the partners heading to real estate search and marketing site Trulia and the other continuing the blog and business that is Sellsius.
Rudolph D. Bachraty III, Sellsius co-founder and founder of Manhattan real estate brokerage company Kiosk Realty, has jumped into a new role as social media guru at Trulia. The move was announced today at the Trulia blog, and Bachraty said he began working in this new role last week.
His duties with Trulia, a company that climbed into the Hitwise top-20 list of most-visited real estate Web sites in September, include managing the Trulia blog and the company’s online and offline social media presence, and contributing to new initiatives.
Bachraty will work out of Trulia’s New York City office, he said, and he will maintain his real estate broker’s license but will not actively broker properties. He has also ceased his involvement in the Sellsius blog and the SellsiusRealEstate.com portal, a community portal for real estate-related listings.
The speed of the growth at Trulia impressed him, Bachraty said. “I wanted to be a part of that ride and I wanted to contribute to the growth of Trulia.”
Blogging and industry networking through Sellsius were instrumental in landing him the new job, he said. “This is the great thing about blogging: It opens doors for you. If you’re passionate about what you write about, it will open doors for you. (This is) all because of blogging and interacting in the social media space. I owe it all to that.”
He said that Joseph G. Ferrara, the other Sellsius co-founder, “is going to do some great things” with Sellsius.
Ferrara said he wishes Bachraty luck in his new endeavor. Blogging definitely has “indirect benefits,” he said. “You may get picked up for a news story, speaking at a conference, you may get picked up for a job. Basically you have a higher profile by blogging. By having a higher profile you make yourself available for opportunities. You provide a more accessible resume. People will basically know who you are.”
Ferrara said he will be working to retool the Sellsius Real Estate listings site. He also said there are still plans for a new installment of Blog Tour USA — a trip across America that he and Bachraty took last year to spend face time with fellow real estate bloggers and promote their business.
Bachraty is not the first high-profile blogger to be hired by a major online real estate company. Dustin Luther, founder of Seattle real estate blog RainCityGuide.com, for example, was hired in November 2006 as director of consumer innovations for Move Inc. In December he left Move to start up his own real estate consulting company.
And real estate valuation and marketing site Zillow.com last year hired blogger Vanessa Fox, who had been product manager for Google Webmaster Central, to serve as product team lead. She left Zillow in November 2007 and now works for venture capital firm Ignition Partners and online media company Search Engine Land.