Zoom into Your New Space at MrOfficeSpace

Searching for the Right Balance... What's the right business model for an Internet listing service?  Should a listing site be a research service or a marketing service?   Or both?  What information should be free?  What information should be fee-based?  Who pays -- owner, broker or tenant?   The jury is still out with the battle raging between competitors -- each seeking new alliances and adding new web functionality.

One of these players is MrOfficeSpace, developed by Office Buildings Magazine, which covers major markets in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest.  MrOfficeSpace includes all of the basic information from its print publications and adds features specifically for the web.  Henry Robbins recently toured me around MrOfficeSpace.  The first thing that I did was register.  You don't have to register.  The entire site is free to the browser, although owners pay for enhanced listing features.   But registration allows you to create lists from the results of a search, which is very helpful.  

One of the neat features of MrOfficeSpace is the ability to drill into a market using a map.  So I zoomed into Manhattan and then drew a boundary around a Midtown area with my mouse.  This generated a list of 326 spaces in 67 buildings.  I checked off several of these spaces and saved a list.  Then I e-mailed it to myself.  The list arrived instantly with a web link to basic space information, and one of the buildings included an IPIX tour, floor plan and building web link -- extras paid for by the building's owner. ... Wow.  When you think of the time, effort and expense of communicating this kind of information in "the old days," you realize how our tools have advanced in the last five years.     

--Peter Pike / ppike@pikenet.com