Dead bodies were discovered, people walked off cliffs – the world went crazy with the launch of Pokémon Go, a smartphone game that uses augmented reality to blend the physical world with the digital. But could the phenomena be used in the business world? Proptech blogger Rayhan Rafiq-Omar finds out.
If you celebrated the death of “Pokes” on Facebook, turn away now.
The latest technological revolution involves people taking the phones, staring at the screen and running around (yes, outdoors) to find imaginary creatures.
Pokémon Go is now more popular than Tinder. And it is only one week old.
For those who are struggling to connect the dots: this game, available on your smartphone, is more sought after than casual sex. Don’t believe me? Look at how many people are aimlessly wandering around the River Thames staring at their phone screens.
What do the property world, Pokémon Go and sex have in common? Well, if you believe the hype, they all point to a future where virtual is the new reality.
In a month where Zoopla announced a virtual viewings service and US virtual reality giant Mattermark acquired London-based Virtual Walkthrough – apologies for so many virtuals in one sentence; naming these things is not very imaginative – Pokémon Go has everyone talking of the possibilities, now that “everyone” is paying attention.
Pokémon Go employs a technique called augmented reality: you see the world through your phone screen and “other stuff” appears layered on top of the real world. In the case of games, it is stuff to collect.
For museums, AR transforms the ability to tell a story around collections. Dinosaur bones might appear to have skin on them, or they could even move around and interact with you on the screen.
For property, it could be the “new” map interface.
Searching for property on a map changed the state of property portals, especially in the US. Giving context to all those listings allowed people to gain something they could not glean from newspaper classifieds. After all, the three most important things about every property are location, location, location.
It is feasible that the new generation of property search apps like Knocker – which shows you property for sale or to let in your vicinity – could work so much better with an AR view of property around you.
Imagine seeing that all the homes for sale are at the High Street end of the road. The app could reveal nuances such as local people avoiding the noisy part of the street.
AR is essentially data displayed in a friendly and futuristic manner. And it prompts the question of what other data could be useful.
What if Rightmove knew a “Facebook” amount of information about your property search behaviour? Could it enable better notifications on properties to look at? If you have never advertised on Facebook, you should try it. The amount of detailed segmentation it can achieve is astounding. You did not supply Facebook with all that data, but so many people are on the platform that patterns quickly emerge.
Is it feasible that a Pokémon Go for property could identify which surfers of “property porn” are just browsing and which are serious buyers?
Or, and this is where technology is at its most creepy, could your browsing activity flag up that you are about to sell your home, before you have called a single estate agent?
It is currently hard to imagine a world where matching people and property moves away from manual interactions with agents understanding your requirements. But if you figure that the amount of data created in the past three years is more than has been created in every year preceding combined, there will one day be enough information on everyone to know everything about them. All of them.
Interact with Rafiq-Omar on Twitter @RayProptech or visit his blog at www.realpundit.com
