Active Rain versus Move - for the layman
Active Rain versus Move.com for the layman:
- A company is started to provide a free blogging platform and community for Realtors, lenders, stagers, etc. The company and its founders create a successful product.
- Realtor.com/Move.com (the aging dinosaur fighting for relevance) see that this “blogging” thing is popular, so they do what Google do and seek out another company that has already started what they intend to finish.
- In what appears to be great naivete, Active Rain gave up the whole kit and kaboodle before the final contract was signed.
- Move backed out after they had seen all they wanted to see, and started their own ineffective community.
- Active Rain sued.
- real/diaBlog has one of the best summaries out there.
Techcrunch brought the story well beyond the real estate blogosphere, and Kevin responded in typical articulate fashion. Contrary to what the Techcrunch story says, the only Realtors involved are the customers.
There is so much more here and here; it’s almost unbearable; as usual some of the best stuff out there is at BHB. This soap opera has already consumed far too many “pages.”
My thoughts? Generally, if you’re going to blog, do it on one of the established platforms such as Typepad, Wordpress, Wordpress.com, over which you have control. The thought that my content may “belong” to someone else is … the words escape me.
What does this mean for the real estate consumer? Very, very little.
Active Rain is/was a great concept that was dependent on the community. The product wasn’t revolutionary, it was evolutionary. What was unique was the community - the members, the camaraderie and the trust. My perception is that Active Rain betrayed that community by not being transparent in their goals - to build a product and sell it. Unfortunately, that product is the unwitting community.
There are two morals to the story - The only way you control the content is if it’s your content. (and even then, with Google, that’s not a guarantee) and, if you step outside your arena of professional expertise (such as negotiating a buyout with a much more powerful entity) get professional help.
Technorati Tags: active rain, move.com, real estate, realtor, realtor.com
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What would this do to the Realtor world?
If we paid for how many miles we drove?
… early next year, six other states will begin testing a new fund-raising mechanism: charging motorists for the number of miles they drive instead of the amount of gasoline they consume.
1) Commissions would rise
2) There would be a greater transparency in real estate fees
3) There may be fewer Realtors
4) More buyers would drive themselves, and the Realtors would be riding shotgun.
5) More Realtors would drive hybrids and their market areas would be smaller.
Technorati Tags: bike lanes, politics, transportation
If we could all set our budgets the way government does
Shocking.
A $3.3 million budget shortfall is forcing Albemarle County to consider reducing school programs, among other money-saving measures, officials confirmed Tuesday.
County leaders had predicted a slowdown in the housing market, but County Executive Robert W. Tucker Jr. said in an e-mail to Albemarle schools Superintendent Pam Moran and the Board of Supervisors that “the extent of the slowdown is greater and has occurred more quickly than expected.”The county collects real-estate taxes twice per year and bases its budget on revenue projections. This year, the county had projected that residents’ property reassessments would rise 5 percent. The new projection pegs the number at 0.8 percent, leaving the county with a hole to fill.
This demonstrates in painful term the perils of 1) basing your budget on hopes rather than concrete money-in-hand and 2) spending every nickel taken from the taxpayers.
It’s a shame that the schools depend so heavily on property taxes.
Technorati Tags: albemarle, politics
Mistakes made in real estate blogging?
I am getting prepared for a presentation at next week’s Virginia Association of Realtors’ Convention. The audience will be the Policy Board (they’re “important”) and whomever else decides to stop by. For those of you who are real estate bloggers - fresh or veteran - what mistakes have you made?
Likely one of the topics will be required disclosures on blogs - covered here before. Should Realtors have to disclose their licensee status in every single post? (I’m a Realtor)
Here is my biggest mistake that I can recall - I deleted a comment three months into blogging, and haven’t made the same mistake since. Unfortunately, the comments didn’t come through when I moved to Wordpress. The caller found my blog, castigated me, I deleted his comment and then re-posted it after having immediately regretted my impulsive decision. Lesson learned.
National indicators that I’m reading today (and a brief market update)
Consumer confidence hits a near 2-year low
Another dismal month for consumer confidence (subscription after today)
The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index Declines Again
Home Prices Post Biggest Drop in 16 Years
Existing Home Sales 5.5 Million
Continuation of Negative Annual Returns in Housing
I’m looking for some good news, but unfortunately haven’t found it yet. Just looking at the numbers of sold homes in Charlottesville/Albemarle year-over-year these are the volumes of homes sold:
January - -23.53%
February - -36.89%
March - 1.75%
April - -5.23%
May - -6.67%
June - -44.77%
July - -40.61%
August - -41.67%
I promise that one day I’ll figure out how to export the data in a way that I can manipulate it into a pretty graph, but I think that the numbers speak for themselves.
Taking condos out of the data, though:
January - -65.22%
February - -58.75%
March - 0%
April - 7.19%
May - 0%
June - -14.57%
July - -8.72%
August - -16.36%
The numbers aren’t quite as discomforting.
Technorati Tags: albemarle, charlalbemarle, charlottesville, economics, psychology, real estate
Blog down-time
“Whoah. It looks like the connection’s timing out. Hmmm … they’re performing ‘a server upgrade for you.’ That could take several hours to come back up. It should be up sometime. Their estimated time is an hour and a half.”
And that’s why my blog was down today.
Not exactly confidence-inspiring. My blog has become a part of my business, if only for the fact that I run so many email addresses through it. It may not be mission-critical to them, but it sure is to me. Time to find a new host that gives a damn.
Bluehost needs to do better.
It’s about Context
I mentioned this same idea this morning in my post regarding yesterday’s radio show.
Mark Cuban (one of my heroes for a variety of reasons) said last week:
The one thing the internet lacks that will forever change us all is Context. There is no way to retain context when you cut and paste. No matter the original intent of the words or pictures, anything on the net probably will find its way into situations for which they were never intended.
Reading beyond the headlines is crucial when analyzing real estate markets. All markets are local, and can be different from state to state, town to town and even block to block. A crucial part of real estate analysis is context and perspective. That is but one part of quality real estate representation.
Technorati Tags: real estate
Agent 2.0
This is part of what I aspire to be and do for my clients and my business. Two of the most crucial parts of the entire story? (to me)
- Aware of and open to new innovations, and how they can fit into one’s business (ed. note: just because a technology is “new” doesn’t mean it’s “effective”)
- Appreciation for “old school” techniques but with an understanding of the value in adapting these techniques to new mediums
As I said earlier this year in an Inman Article (PDF):
“The challenge that we’re facing from the technology standpoint is that there is not a critical mass yet for bleeding-edge technology. If only one person in the market has heard of it — it’s cool to be in the leading edge but it doesn’t do any good if nobody else is using it. The balance is knowing and using what is new and cool but also knowing and using what everyone else is (using),” he said.
The article also highlights its author, Kelly Roark; she is an example of the caliber of mind they have at Trulia - she (and they) “get it.”
What’s Web 3.0 going to look like?
This story has spurred me to finish a story of my own on how on-and off-line marketing can meld together. Coming Wednesday.
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