TradeMe Property drops SMAPs for Google Street View

TradeMe's realestate section went live with Google Street Views this morning, capping a move from SMAPs to Google Maps.

SMAPs ran on a back-end created by Wellington company Project X, and a front-end developed by an inhouse TradeMe team.

“While we had a lot of positive feedback about SMAPs from our members, but the fact is that mapping is not our core business and Google‘s better at innovating in this area,” says Trade Me’s head of commercial, Mike O’Donnell.

Mr O'Donnell tells NBR that Google Street View was a "very attractive component" of Google Maps.

With Geosmart and Terralink still in the process of taking photos for their own Street View-style services, Google's offering was also the only street photo option on the block.

Realestate websites Open2view and Realestate.co.nz also introduced Google Street Views as soon as the service went live this morning, but a default setting on maximum zoom resulted in many users seeing blank screens, according to chatter on TradeMe's message boards (both sites were running smoothly when NBR visited).

Mr O'Donnell says 51% of TradeMe Property listings now have Google Maps Street View links.

When TradeMe first added SMAPs to its property section two and a half years ago, fierce resistance from realestate agents saw only around 18% of listings feature maps. By Mr O'Donnell's account, agents were scared that clients would go to see houses themselves. SMAPs eventually climbed to appear in around 39% of listings, but Google Maps, going live over the past couple of days, have immediately jumped to appear in 51% of listings. Mr O'Donnell credits the increase to Google Maps' greater user-friendliness. Street Views are automatically added to any Google Maps link added by a seller.

TradeMe's TravelBug site has also made the switch from SMAPs to Google Maps and Google Street Views.