After about five months of work with almost 20 of the leading MLSs in the U.S., we’re really excited to announce the formation of the MLS Domains Association. You can see the press release on the Association’s web site.
I started this project by approaching leading MLSs with a strategic vision for what an MLS top-level domain on the Internet could be. (Think of internet addresses like www.Maine.MLS and www.Chicago.MLS, but for use only by MLSs.)
Please visit the Association’s web site and read the press release; there will be posts here and on the association’s web site in the coming days providing more detail.
Let me know what you think!
-Brian
(Disclosure: As our consulting firm was paid to help create the association and is helping to manage it during its first couple months of existence, I am hardly unbiased where this project is concerned. If you read upcoming posts, you’ll see that I am strongly in favor of this idea, though as always open to contrary points of view.)
wonder what major league soccer will have to say, go to yahoo and type in mls major league soccer comes up too.
Key question: would the MLS tld be used for a) agent/broker access to the MLS, and/or b) for building public MLS sites?
As a broker providing the content to the MLS, I'm very much opposed to public MLS sites competing with our brokerage site. Why would I support the MLS using our fees to create a tld that we can't use?
Now, if the content providers to the MLS (
Wait, let me get this straight.
With a VOW, a broker can have all the MLS data and provide it to the public.
A public MLS site doesn't have nearly as much MLS data that a VOW has.
But somehow the public MLS site has rights to use the myhometown.mls, but I can't use littlebrokerwithabigsite.mls?
And somehow the MLS is going to prevent me from
I believe these posters make some valid points. I also have a problem with what I see as a power grab by MLSs. An MLS should be nothing more than a database IMO. Members (brokers) who create the listings should be the only source of listing information derived from that database. I also posted anonymously because of what I perceive to be targeting by my MLS in the past.
Anonymous 1: We are not aware of an effort by Major League Soccer to obtain .MLS as a TLD.
Anonymous 2: The question of MLSs operating consumer-facing listing sites is still controversial. I've written elsewhere of my skepticism regarding them. But several of the MLSs involved in the MLS Domains Association project do not operate public-facing listings sites. They might still find
Brian: The MLS Domains Association SHOULD take a position AGAINST the MLSs using the tld for consumer-facing websites.
If an MLS is going to prevent brokers from using domain names containing "mls" because IDX/VOW doesn't contain the entire MLS, the MLS must play by the same rules itself since public-facing MLS sites don't have the entire MLS either.
My
First, my understanding is that the public facing sites of the MLS provide the leads to the listing agent and listing office. Does it really matter where your potential buyers come from?
Also, how can a small real estate office justify the fact that it is any better for them to get the leads of lets say 100 listings that belong to a single larger office when they only have 1 active