lassoLasso is a new tool that lets you bookmark listings across ALL websites, and takes notes and discuss them with their friends, family, or co-workers.

I know many here read 1000Watt, too. Brian mentioned a few thoughts on Lasso in his most recent Friday Flash update. I spoke with Aaron Sperling last week, and thought I’d share a few of my thoughts on his new product as well.

Bookmarking listings, and discussing them, is not a new concept. Numerous products have come and gone over the years in the real estate listing bookmarking space — Dwellicious is the first one that pops to my mind. AgentFolio being a more recent one. Most, or all, of them have relied on MLS/IDX for data. By not going that route, Lasso creates a massive empty canvas problem for their product. When people show up, they have nothing to look at without first lasso’ing properties from across the web. Few people know what to do with an empty canvas. But virtually everyone enjoys looking at a beautiful canvas full of X.

Lack of automation is going to be a barrier for agent and consumer adoption. For instance, I grabbed a listing URL off of Zillow, and tried to “lasso” it. I got the following screen:

Too much work, so I dropped off. Of course, I’m not actually buying a house right now, so if I was, maybe I would have gone through the pain of manually entering these fields.

The real question is, “Why not just email the link to my friend instead?

Lasso is an interesting feature, for a portal or software vendor with existing distribution. But my gut is it’s not a business by itself. A better way to bookmark properties, and discuss them, is a “nice to have” not a “pain point”. As such, I don’t believe consumers will find and use Lasso on their own, so success will be reliant on agents/brokers adopting the tool and pro-actively putting it into the hands (phones) of their clients. Will that happen? Maybe, but I’m not convinced.

What do you think?