Personalized real estate event feed

Abstract

A personalized feed system is described herein that provides feeds that are tailored to the preferences of each user of a real estate website or application. A user signs up to receive a stored profile with the website, and the profile includes information such as what geographical regions the buyer is interested in, what types of homes the buyer is looking for, and so on. The personalized feed system uses this information to provide a feed specific to the buyer that notifies the buyer of listings that are of particular relevance to that buyer. The personalized feed system summarizes other real estate events that are relevant to the user in a single time-oriented feed. Buyers receive information about new and/or modified listings, sales, outstanding offers, status of a transaction, and the like, while sellers receive information about sales, new and/or modified listings, open offers, and so on.

1 . A computer-implemented method to receive and correlate feed events for a personalized real estate data feed for a user, the method comprising:
 receiving user information that specifies one or more event types of real estate information of interest to a user;   selecting an event source from which the system receives a data stream of real estate information;   connecting to the selected event source;   receiving event information from the connected event source;   identifying events for the user, based on the received user information and the received event information; and   storing correlation information that associates the user with one or more events identified for that user,   wherein the preceding steps are performed by at least one processor.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1  wherein receiving user information comprises accessing a stored user profile for a user to identify configuration information that specifies one or more types of real estate events. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1  wherein receiving user information comprises receiving one or more event types to ignore for a user and not place in a personalized feed for the user. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1  wherein selecting the event source comprises receiving information from a source selected from the group consisting of a multiple listing service, a county tax data source, a transaction data source, a broker data source, a geographic information source, and a neighborhood information source. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1  wherein selecting the event source comprises periodically retrieving information from multiple data sources as part of a separate process to keep up to date real estate information on a real estate search website. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 1  wherein connecting to the selected event source comprises at least one of accessing a website associated with the event source, invoking a web service application programming interface (API) of the event source, accessing, a file transfer protocol (FTP) site of the event source, or establishing a remote database connection with the event source. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 1  wherein receiving event information comprises separating the event information into individual events and storing the separate events in an events data structure of a data store. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 1  wherein receiving event information comprises storing bulk data retrieved from the event source and later extracting events by querying one or more records associated with the bulk data. 
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 1  wherein receiving event information comprises defining as an event data that has not changed for a specified period of time. 
     
     
         10 . The method of  claim 1  wherein identifying events for the user comprises comparing information in the user's profile with the received event information to identify one or more events that correlate with a type of event of interest to the user. 
     
     
         11 . The method of  claim 1  wherein storing correlation information comprises storing reference information from which detailed event information can later be retrieved. 
     
     
         12 . The method of  claim 1  wherein storing correlation information comprises marking each event with an indication of whether a response is requested from the user to each event. 
     
     
         13 . The method of  claim 1  further comprising performing the method for each of a plurality of event sources to correlate events from each event source with the user's profile information. 
     
     
         14 . A computer system for providing a personalized real estate event feed, the system comprising:
 a processor and memory configured to execute software instructions embodied within the following components;   a user profile component that stores user profile information for one or more users of the system;   one or more event sources that include various sources of real estate related information;   a real estate data store that stores information from the event sources, user profile information, and user-to-event association information;   an event detection component that detects separate events from the event sources and stores the events in the real estate data store;   a user-event correlation component that periodically analyzes the real estate data store to identify events relevant to particular users and to associate those events with the particular users;   a feed management component that manages a personalized feed for each user of the system, wherein the personalized feed includes feed items based on the identified events for each particular user;   a feed rendering component that renders the personalized feed for a given user upon request by the user; and   a feed interactivity component that handles user interaction with interactive feed items in the user's personalized feed, wherein an interactive feed item can receive a response from the user.   
     
     
         15 . The system of  claim 14  wherein the user profile information comprises authentication information, preference information that indicates a type of real estate the user is interested in, and one or more transactions the user is a party to. 
     
     
         16 . The system of  claim 14  wherein the event sources comprise at least data streams from a multiple listing service, a county information data stream, and transaction information from a real estate broker from which the system identifies and records events of interest for each user of a real estate website. 
     
     
         17 . The system of  claim 14  wherein the event detection component identifies separate events based on comparing an earlier version of information received from an event source with a later version and detecting changes between the two versions, wherein each change is classified as a separate event. 
     
     
         18 . The system of  claim 14  wherein the user-event correlation component produces a set of events associated with each user that the user did not have to manually find, and that are waiting for the user to view in a feed-based format when the user next accesses the system. 
     
     
         19 . The system of  claim 14  wherein rendering a feed for a user comprises placing the feed items of the user's personalized feed in a time-oriented, uniform format according to a well-known standard for consuming data feeds. 
     
     
         20 . A computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions for controlling a computer system to display a personalized user feed for a user of a real estate application, wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause a processor to perform actions comprising:
 receiving user information that identifies a particular user requesting to display the user's personalized user feed of real estate events that have occurred in a particular time period;   retrieving one or more latest feed items that represent events that have occurred in the time period specified;   rendering a feed that mixes feed items from multiple data sources in a uniform format for display in a feed format that is different than the native format of the underlying information;   displaying the rendered feed to the user;   receiving a user interaction with an interactive feed item in the displayed feed that requests a user response; and   recording a response indicated by the user interaction and providing the response to a requesting party.