The survey sent to all RENX readers last week about our breaking news service gave it an overwhelming thumbs up, although for some readers it was a qualified response.

Following is a summary of the results as well as responses to some of your questions and comments.

We were pleased to have received 285 survey results including 90 respondents who provided written feedback.

To the first question on the survey, “What is your first reaction to the RENX breaking news service?” 82 per cent of respondents were “Very Positive” or “Somewhat Positive”.

Here are two positive comments we received:

– “I don’t always have the chance to read through the RENX, so when I see the headline « Breaking News », I open it right away and get it first hand!”

– “Great to be in the know as soon as something happens or made public”

And thank you ‘Bill’ for this comment:

– “Your stories are always accurate and in some cases they will beat our company news bulletins so I can take a guess by saying that your service is very helpful for smaller business groups that cannot afford to put out their own news bulletins. Keep up the good work. Bill”

The remaining 18 per cent respondents to the first question were either neutral (9.5 per cent) somewhat negative (7.4 per cent) or very negative (two per cent).

These readers, while not entirely happy with the breaking news service, offered several constructive insights and suggestions. Several of you asked that RENX be more selective in our choice of breaking news, selecting only the most significant announcements to send in an alert.

It is our pledge to our readers that, based on this feedback, we will try to be more selective; if in doubt we will lean more often toward not sending an item as breaking news. As some of you noted, we can still feature it in a regular daily newsletter.

These are three of your comments about RENX’s choice of breaking news stories.

– “You need to determine what constitutes significant breaking news. Is it number of dollars involved, number of people, or some subjective reason.”

– “Some insignificant updates as part of the breaking news service. More focus on MAJOR news events.”

– “I think it should be more selective. Most of it is not relevant to me but I was happy to have some. I enjoy reading your regular headline email. It has made my life easier. Thanks for what you do.”

Opting out of breaking news

There were a number of readers who said they would prefer to be able to opt out of the breaking news and just receive RENX curated and Property Biz newsletters.

We are currently working on the specifications for the design of a new website and news delivery technology and we will incorporate this into our plans.

A local news option

There were a couple of requests that our news service provide geographically specific content, which is another feature we will build into future RENX platforms.

“Are you better informed…”

The second question in the survey asked “Are you better informed about major stories in the commercial real estate industry in Canada since the RENX breaking news service started?”

The response was very similar to the first question with 82 per cent answering “Yes”. The distribution of positive replies however, didn’t correlate exactly to those responses; some of our readers who had ‘neutral’ and ‘negative’ responses to the first question indicated they were, in fact, better informed by receiving the breaking news alerts.

Once again, we would like to thank our readers for responding to the survey and providing us with your thoughtful comments and suggestions.