Redfin, the real estate infustry’s first online brokerage for buying and selling homes, revealed that 51% of people who bought a home through Redfin reported that the company’s online community influenced their decision to work with the brokerage. Prior to making a purchase, over 22% of Redfin buyers had posted a question to the community.

Visits to Redfin’s online community have increased 415% year over year. In that time, Redfin’s revenues have increased by more than 40%, while the company has reduced marketing program expenses 82%; Redfin’s Net Promoter Score, a measure of customer satisfaction, has increased by 5%.

Redfin’s community, powered by Lithium, is one of the only forums for real estate consumers to ask one another about pricing trends, neighborhood guidance, and local best practices The community allows customers to comment on individual agents’ service, and to suggest improvements to Redfin’s website. Community postings appear throughout Redfin’s site, with each agent’s contributions appearing on a profile page that also includes the agent’s entire deal history as well as customer reviews and ratings.

The Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) has selected KickApps to power its online community, myMDA. myMDA is a place for people whose lives have been affected by muscular dystrophy and associated diseases to gather and share their experiences and get support from each other.

myMDA features a social network where members can create online profiles about themselves, friend other members of the community, upload blogs, photos and videos, engage in discussions with other members on message boards, and comment, rate, tag and find content that has been created and uploaded by other members of myMDA. Additionally, members can easily share community content and spread awareness with family and friends on any website, major social networks and blogs.

KickApps has forged a partnership with Infinity Pro Sports to bring social media and online video experiences to professional and college team and league websites. The first joint customer is the legendary basketball team Harlem Globetrotters.

Social media offers sports teams and leagues a unique opportunity to engage fans around without the geographical boundaries. Using the KickApps Social Media Platform, Infinity Pro Sports will be able to easily create and manage branded social networks for their clients that feature photo and video uploading and sharing, blogging and discussion forums. Through this, teams and league can deliver an immersive online environment where fans can meet other fans and collectively share their passion for their favorite teams, and create a new marketing and revenue channel for ticket and merchandise sales.

The KickApps Social Media Platform currently powers social media websites for many of the world’s largest professional and amateur sports teams and leagues, including the Phoenix Suns’ PlanetOrange.net, New Orleans Hornets, New York Knicks, Phoenix Mercury, San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Seahawks and New York Rangers.

RushmoreDrive.com, a search engine for the Black community and TheLoop21.com, a web site that provides in-depth analysis of economics and politics, have joined together to bring news and commentary from a Black perspective to their users.

RushmoreDrive is a first-of-its-kind search engine for the Black community that delivers a blend of mainstream search results plus a layer of more relevant search results influenced by the Black community. It has developed several community and content partnerships in order to better serve its growing population of users known as RushmoreDrivers. While search is RushmoreDrive.com’s core offering, RushmoreDrivers also get news, Black opinions and an opportunity to search for jobs with companies that value diversity, all at the same web destination.

TheLoop21.com is expected to bring a unique perspective to ongoing news that is important to the Black community. L