Answer: One year in the Internet’s life-cycle is equivalent to one year of a dog’s life (you know, there are seven of theirs to one of ours?)

Changes to the way the Internet works – that is, its exponential growth and expansion into new realms of our lives – is difficult to keep up with, even for people who like me work with it every day.

With this in mind, we’ve decided to lessen the confusion and burden that change sometimes represents, by taking you through some of the recent and upcoming changes to the reiq.com website.

In early December 2011 we introduced the .com extension to our domain and branding, the theory being that .com makes it easier to recall and type into a web browser. We also did a bit of cosmetic work on our home page and launched an updated search box. This has proved successful by allowing our now more than 90,000-property listings to be found more easily.

So, what are our plans for the Institute’s web offering in the near future?

We would like to retain the traditional property portal features such as property listings, search by accredited agents and property sales data information. However, the aim is to enrich the experience through the addition of dynamic multimedia applications including social networking, video posting, live streaming, blogging, online training with e-commerce capabilities, chat online with an accredited agent while reading tips and advice for listing a property and much, much more.

We’ve embarked on this journey by recently launching this blog @ reiqblog.com and are excited to be launching an REIQTV channel soon and re-launching a simple-to-use but powerful property search engine. These will be launched in early March.

Why did we decide to re-build our new search engine?

reiq.com now features the second largest number of Queensland properties for sale and lease in the country, and as this has happened in a very short period of time, it has outgrown our current technology. The expectations for search are higher than they used to be, thanks to sites like Google and searchers wanting to find the latest relevant listings the second they are available.

What will be the new features?

New keyword features will include the ability to type to search by: region; suburb; postcode; street; address; ID; keyword or a mix of different terms. For example: “Gold Coast; ocean views”, “Gympie; investment”, “Park Road, Milton or 4000; furnished”. And you can use the other tabs and filters too, just MOUSE OVER rent, commercial, business or rural. Remember: it is always a good idea to include the surrounding suburbs, or go to the advanced search for more options.

We’ve built this new search engine with the future in mind. As reiq.com grows in popularity we will be able to show more relevant property listings to our users, and this will translate into reiq.com delivering many more qualified leads to our accredited agencies.

Ah. I love it when a plan comes together.

Other adaptations of social networking techniques create new takes on a traditional job board. Online Recruitment owner Geoff Jennings says he runs a number of different Twitter accounts that “feed” (provide updates to) “followers” (people who agree to receive his messages) a one-line description of particular categories of jobs, followed by a weblink to the job ad on a different website such as Careerone.com.au. The information he uses is collated by a third party, a website called an aggregator (www.recruit.net), which “scrapes” information off a number of websites and collates it into a single-line description called a “news feed”. Jennings takes this news feed, combines it with an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed from other sites than ban aggregation, and mixes in a few of his client’s positions that he is contracted to fill. He then broadcasts the jobs on Twitter, under account names such as ITjobsbris and ITjobssydney and gamerjobs.

“At this stage I am just testing the service. My company is not yet big enough to draw a large following on Twitter if I only put the jobs my company was recruiting for. But if I put many jobs on I can feed to a broader audience,” he says.

“That’s my strategy, anyway. I am very up-front about it (on those accounts).”

He maintains a personal account under his own name: “I don’t flog jobs in there, it’s to brand me as a recruiter. But on the other accounts, people don’t want to see me in there among the jobs.”

He says while he doesn’t get a large number of inquiries from Twitter to his company’s positions, the response so far is promising.

“I do get a lot of people ‘re-Twitting’. That’s when people pick up my Tweet and put a RT in front of it and send it out to their network. Then you get that community-based thing going. From that, I have had emails saying ‘I am interested, tell me more’.”

Social networking expert and author of Connection Generation Iggy Pintado says Jennings could possibly represent the future direction of Twitter.

I hope they’re no applicants out there, on tenterhooks, waiting for news.

And it’s no wonder. Even the folks who should be supporting MyCareer aren’t advertising with them.

Fairfax NZ is advertising for a Acquisitions and Retentions Manager . Where did they place their ad? Seek.

Then there’s Online Marketing Group, the folks who boast in their job ad that “Fairfax Digital is a strategic investor in our company”, have posted a job for a Online Account Executive position. Guess they don’t have much faith in their investor. They chose to advertise exclusively on Seek.

Dear Geoff,

As you may know SEEK reviews pricing structure at this time each year.

I want to let you know that there will be no price rise of SEEK products in 2009.

This decision has been made in recognition of your ongoing loyalty to SEEK during an extremely challenging economic period for all Australian businesses, and as a demonstration of our support of your business and our industry during this time.

SEEK remains absolutely committed to supporting your business by delivering:

* Australia’s largest job seeking audience
* Products that better suit your needs & attract a more relevant audience to SEEK
* Superior customer service and flexibility

Thanks again for choosing to use SEEK and for your support.

I wish you all the best for the coming year.

Kind Regards,

Joe Powell
Managing Director
SEEK Employment

Also: Spammers using photos now. They will try anything to get published.