An international online publication has launched a poll asking whether OnTheMarket will survive.
OTM has reacted with anger, completely disparaging the move, and demanding reassurances that the responses will not be hijacked by those wanting to see OTM fail.
OTM, which yesterday emphasised it is here to stay, did not name who those wanting to see it fail might be.
However, it has demanded clarification from Property Portal Watch.
Property Portal Watch, which covers the market for global property portals, has made the future of OTM its first question in a new series of polls that will cover a variety of products and technologies.
It says the results of each survey will be posted after one or two weeks but after OTM’s response yesterday, may have to reconsider its poll and explain how it is monitoring responses.
Although it underlines that two responses from the same computer will not be accepted, it does not say how it will supervise mass responses from one or more organisations – for example, including where employees might put in responses from both work and home computers.
Last night, a spokesperson for OnTheMarket.com said: “The question for this poll feels like rather a leading question.
“For the record, OnTheMarket.com has grown considerably this year in terms of agents listing on the portal and traffic visiting it. We are here to stay.
http://www.propertyportalwatch.com/news/
Comments (3)
This will get very nasty soon as OTM’s office numbers move closer and close to Hoopla. It is alleged that Hoopla is now worth £1billion and Wrongmove worth about £4billion so there is bound to be a great deal of bloodletting before this ends. There are some very powerful people who will not want to see these two fail.
All we really need is for the agents to continue to support OTM so there is a very real chance it can succeed to the benefit of everyone, even the consumer, as agents take control of their destiny in the same way as our friends in the USA have down with Realtor.com
“OnTheMarket.com has since attracted more than 6,400 agents to list on its site, according to its most recently released figures — but it remains far short of Zoopla’s 16,850 and Rightmove’s 19,750. It ran a TV ad campaign in 2015 aiming to build its brand among the public.” – Financial Times today.
OTM branch numbers have stagnated for the past six months NewsBoy, even offering £50 a month or free of charge deals has done little.
Remember when they said they’d be the number two portal by January!?
I think this is a really bad sign for OTM.. it is certainly going to be very interesting…
They really do need some good PR and Media people, every time a bit of potential negativity is pushed their way their immediate reaction is to jump on and try and shut it down, this creates a negative impact in it’s self as they come across paranoid and frankly a bit silly. Engage with it have a bit of a laugh with it I saw the poll the other day and didn’t think twice about it, a jovial press release saying “isn’t it great that people want to talk about OTM on an International property site and we will be interested to see the outcome but of course we know it is and will continue to work” would come across much better.