An interesting article by Mary McKnight from RSS Pieces (guesting on the Future of Real Estate Marketing blog) about how SIOC and FOAF can be applied to the application domain of real estate:

2007 Real Estate Technology Predictions

Homeless Technologies

Wandering the web, I see a lot of homeless technologies. What are homeless technologies? These are the wild, wacky and “wow” technologies that just don’t have a use yet. These are not the beta projects that 4 kids in a basement are coding away at or the silent well-funded threats that are already lurking out there on the web. Instead, they are the high-level information aggregation models covered in college theses and the concepts pontificated on by the geekiest of the geeks at the geekiest of conferences. So, here’s my list of some homeless technologies that are just begging to find residence in the real estate industry within the next year or so.

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Uses for the semantic web in real estate:

• Internet subscriptions: Once SIOC is enabled, users will be able to subscribe via RSS or ATOM not to individual sites but the Internet as a whole based on their related interests. Realtors will be able to aggregate all related data on MLS, emerging technologies and market data from a single source. Gone will be the days of hunting the web for the latest greatest development. The semantic web will do that for you. Similarly, homeowners and buyers will be able to subscribe to aggregated listing feeds
• SIOC enabled search engines: SIOC engine will deliver more relevant search results based on your queries. For example if you do a search for “homes for sale in Cape Coral” the search engine will say I found these sites and would also provide a link that says if you think this article is helpful, you may also want to read this article as well. Search engines will work better because each article will have contextual information that is attached to it and helps guide the spider rather than having the search engine decide what it “thinks” your article is about.
• Content suggestion tools: Your visitor has read an interesting article about home selling trends in your farm area but they want to learn more. Using SIOC you would be able to suggest related articles based on topic. The end result is that you are able to help your client find more and relevant information on their specific areas of interest. Essentially you build your credibility as a trusted source and data center to your visitors.