Online narcissism seems to be replacing free food and wine as the number one draw for agent participation. Is Trulia Voices doomed to become just another real estate agent schmooze fest?

It appears that what started out as a great idea on Trulia – Trulia Voices, a venue for the real estate consumer to pose questions to real estate professionals – is becoming just another venue for real estate agents to pose questions to each other in hopes of getting their names in front each other and the Google search engine.

I’ve been following Trulia Voices for some time and I’ve noticed, more and more, that 80% to 90% of the questions being asked seem to come from real estate agents not the consumer. In looking at Trulia Voices home page this morning, there were only two out of 15 entries that came from consumers. It's a shame, I thought Trulia had a great idea, but the situation seems to be an example of how online customers can morph a venue to their needs not business' intent. In this case, it's obvious that the majority of Trulia Voices customers are real estate agents, not consumers.

Will Trulia be able to return Voices to it’s original intent or do they even care? All entries, regardless of who posts them, help to build content on Trulia which helps Trulia build dominance on the search engines. The agents seem to be happy spending their time schmoozing with each other, asking questions they already know the answers to – so why change anything?

If you’re a consumer reading this and you want a serious answer to a serious question in regards to real estate, my suggestion is – find an agent that invests their time talking to consumers, not manufacturing questions for other real estate agents as a means of hoping to get your attention.