Fairfax Digital have been wrapped over the knuckles by the ACCC and have agreed not to advertise as ‘FREE’ a new mobile search service launched by Domain.com.au.
Using the advertised service users of the site could view properties from domain.com.au on their mobile phone (http://m.domain.com.au)and receive ‘free’ SMS alerts. Only one problem, SMS alerts actually cost the user 0.55c per alert and of course downloading or viewing listings on your mobile phone could also incur charges under most pathetic data plans offered by Telco’s, which is nothing short of pathetic.
I have a spanking new 16G iPhone and the service is quite good. Pity that about a 1/4 of the screen is taken up by ads from Commonwealth Bank and links on property pages to Home Loans (which by big thumb clicked on average 3 times per listing by accident). Still it is another one up on REA and I have to say the RSS feed service from Domain.com.au (for searches) is a beauty and saves a lot of time for myself/my friends and this has been up for a long time now and not replicated on REA.
So apart from a totally misleading advert (who from Fairfax seriously thought this one would get past the umpire?) it is quite a nice little service. I am still completely unconvinced about mobile phones for real estate – despite so many companies pushing it as I have not seen anything truly ground breaking (or useful) in this space.
In other news: Cuil goes live
A new search engine developed by some seasoned ex Google employees went live. Cuil.com is the new service and it is glaringly lacking in Australian content but getting some serious coverage on news websites. Has some nice features, but nothing really exciting here.