Blog | Houzz for students

In my casual surveys of architecture students from first year to final, I’ve been surprised to discover how few engage professionally with social media. While Facebook is ubiquitous and many have Instagram accounts jammed full of selfies, there is little interest to extend this activity into the professional sphere.

This is the 6th of eight articles exploring the major social media outlets, how I engage with them, and how they might be of interest to students. An archive of the series can be accessed here.

Social media

Houzz
Mihaly Slocombe
Following: 22
Followers: 477
Joined: October 2013

Purpose: A massive online database of house photos, it’s the eBay of residential architecture.

Community: Unlike many other project typologies, private residential clients are notoriously difficult to find and connect with. As the Houzz user group is mostly populated by non-architects, it’s evolving into one of the best ways to overcome this hurdle.

I follow a very small number of colleagues and clients. I don’t see Houzz as a useful tool to connect with other architects (Twitter and Instagram are much better for this), but I can attest to its ability to generate project leads. Our followers come from all over the world and are mostly non-architects, though it’s hard to tell whether any of these connections will lead to fruitful collaborations.

Portfolio: Houzz is essentially a supercharged portfolio website. It’s a way for us to push our work out into a domain populated by millions of people feverishly devouring photos of houses. It also acts a gateway to our own website and a growing number of project enquiries. Most of the project leads we receive from online portals (as discussed here) come via Houzz.

Notoriety: As I uploaded our portfolio onto Houzz long before it officially launched in Australia, we’ve benefited from a huge headstart in having our work seen by more people in more places. Much like Google, the Houzz search algorithms reward popularity with more popularity. As bizarre evidence, this photo of one of our wardrobes has been saved by over 16,000 people, and continues to receive awards each year as the most liked wardrobe photo in Australia.

Procrastination: For anyone interested in building or renovating, Houzz is easily the most addictive source of procrastination in existence.

For students: Unless you have built work in your portfolio, Houzz is not a good way for you to advertise yourself. It’s possible you could connect with potential employers, but again I think Twitter and Instagram are better tools for this.

However, with 9 million photos and counting, a 2014 market valuation upwards of $2b, and their first major tech acquisition late last year, I figure you’re either on the Houzz wagon or getting covered in dust.[2]

Good examples:

These are all practicing architects, all of whose practices appear on the first page of Houzz when I search for professionals in Victoria.

Importance:
4 / 10 for you
10 / 10 for me


Footnotes:

  1. Leading social networks worldwide as of January 2016Statista; January 2016
  2. George Anders; Houzz tops $2 billion valuation, opens million-item marketplaceForbes; October 2014

Image:

  1. Houzz, logo copyright Houzz. Composition by author.