[jxrlee]

What's your plan for getting users?

(I'm about to generalize here) The problem I see with this idea is that only people who had bad experiences are going to sign up and post reviews/comments etc. just to spite their housing. This happens on ratemyprofessor all the time.

What are the incentives for people to join? I would assume that your target audience is for people who are looking for new housing and new move-ins. How are you going to get current tenants to come back and answer questions once they are living there already and knowledgable about everything (since this is what creates all your content and draws people to your site I think...)?

Speaking from experience my own personal opinion, when I am satisfied with my living situation, I won't go out of my way to find and join a renters network to ask questions/share experiences. Hope this helps!

[sheraz]

That is the million dollar question.

Our main strategy is community development around Addressory. Let's build a community of renters and tenants, by renters and tenants. Let's talk about quality of life issues, like the ones discussed in the comment above.

Continuing user engagement is a problem that we are working on. Maybe it is as simple as emailing them when a new questions appears on a property they have flagged.

To your last point, I agree -- when I am happy I do not tell anyone. But would you share if I asked you to, just to pay it forward for the next person moving in?

[jxrlee]

I would question how many people would be willing to 'flag' to receive emails (unless it's the original poster). Secondly, I wouldn't share unless I got something out of it. If I'm too lazy to fill out surveys that give store credit, I probably wouldn't share for this.

I think a good strategy might be to get landlords/owners as some of the first users. They have incentive to respond to questions and comments from potential renters so that might be a good starting point for content.

[sheraz]

In the first version of the site we had a model for renters, brokers, and landlords. We tried to service everyone through on place. However, after we built it I realized that I would never use that site. I wanted to build a site for tenants and no one else.

I agree that there are a lot of people who are too lazy or unwilling to contribute. Our challenge is to convince them it is a good idea, and do it without some awful gamification-skinner-box methodology.