Properazzi is a property search engine, based in Barcelona, Spain. The service only launched in March 2007, but already it claims to have the largest database of property listings in Europe – 1.8 million property listings in 45 countries, in multiple languages and currencies. The company is funded by Mangrove Capital Partners.
Today Properazzi announced a collaboration with WidSets – a mobile widgets service powered by Nokia. Essentially WidSets is a widgets platform for mobile phones, allowing users to keep track of information via RSS feeds. It was listed in Charles Knight’s recent 85 Piece Mobile Search Tool Kit.
The Properazzi WidSets collaboration will enable real-time European real estate searches, via mobile phone. Users will be able to create searches for properties online, save them, and then receive matching results on their mobile phones as suitable properties appear on the market. A WidSets search can be created on the Properazzi website by clicking the WidSets icon next to any search results.
Properazzi says it is the first property portal to launch WidSets at a full European scale. There is only one other property site offering WidSets – etuovi.com, a relatively small Finnish site that offers local properties only.
Properazzi also says that WidSets is a very good mobile technology solution for property search, mainly because it’s non-intrusive. They say that several property sites offer SMS alerts, but “they can end up being more annoying than useful.” With WidSets, notes Properazzi, users remain in control of what and when they want to search using their mobiles.
Conclusion
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to test out this product, seeing as it’s European-based and also mobile. But if any Mobile Web fans in Europe want to try out Properazzi/WidSets, let us know what you think in the comments here. All I can say is that it’s an excellent extension of an existing web 2.0 PC service, to the rapidly expanding mobile Web. What’s more, next on Properazzi’s to-do list is to introduce full mobile search features for its users. So WidSets is just the first step for their mobile expansion.
Also note that property search is yet another vertical search area that is up for grabs (before Google gets its tentacles into it), so Properazzi has a flying start on this search niche. Good for them and hopefully we see more innovative ‘best of breed’ vertical search engines coming from all around the world.
