This seems interesting. Anyone know if anything will be happening this Sunday? Not sure what those guys from Sellsius. are up to but6 I like their style. Is Sellsius a real estate company or a classified service company. Not sure what they do. hmm.
Gawker Media is a great network but I cannot read Valleywag The content is good but the dead links just suck. They hardly link out to stories which is annoying. Everything that looks like an outbound link is really an internal link. View any article and you will see what I am talking about. Why do they do this. Not sure but it might be a way to increase page views. Internal linking is fine when you reference another article but when it brings you to a crap inside page then its just annoying.
This is a great read if you are a fan of Techcrunch. I have been reading TechCrunch for a long time. I remember emailing Mike at the start of TC. I asked him who he was and to put some info on his About page. He sent me a quick email and posted the page that day.
Congrats to him and his success.
Check this out Fix My Street. Great concept.
I am wondering how the Inman Wiki works. A while back I listing my blog url under my profile and all my entries populate at on my profile page Anyone know how this works? Sorta seems like an online feed reader or something. If anyone knows please shoot me a line. I am interested.
This is a great service if you have been looking for a domain name for a while and have come up short on all attempts. Pickydomains is a new service where members of the service help you figure out a domain name. You deposit $50 and you tell the members about your website. They will then bounce names off of you to see if one sticks. If it does you go to your favorite domain registry and buy it. Then you release the $50 to Pickydomians.com. They take $25 and pay the person who thought of the name the other $25. Seems like a cool concept because finding a domain is a pain now that all the obvious ones are gone. If no domain is found for you they will refund the $50 you initially put in.
Love it. Might have to test it out cause I cannot think of a domain for my side project.
Saw a post about real estate platforms and it is such a shame that real estate will never have an api based MLS platform. Not going to happen. API’s are designed to give up control and MLS’s are walled gardens. But wait, if there is one MLS system who could develop an open platform I’d say that MLSPIN could do it. MLSPIN is so ahead of ALL other MLS systems. I show agents from different states and they are blown away everytime. MLSPIN is all about new technologies and if they can grab more states then they will be able to create something neat. Even though they have tons of money. they should take a venture capital investment to gobble up a few MLS db’s.
I have been rebuilding a real estate platform for a couple of months and I am hoping to get it launched in the Fall. Well, it was a personal project and it worked so well I decided that it would be best if I rebuilt the platform so it could scale for others. It should impact the industry in a big way. We think we have figured out how to help agents find buyers and sellers in a social setting.
Statewide MLS just implemented SAFEMLS to make more money. SAFEMLS is nothing more than a key chain that agents have to carry around and when they want to go on MLS agents have to click the key chain to get a new password to enter system. I hate it because its such a pain in the ass. But the concept got me thinking. When will computers have a spot for password cards? Insert the card and protect your passwords rather than use a browser based password system which can be hacked.
Referencing old articles in new postings is a complete pain in the ass. I would pay for a plugin that allows me to right mouse click in the editor that will bring up a simple menu that allows me to go through all my past postings and select the past posting that I want to reference but since I have no voice in the blog world this will never happen. Thought I’d put the idea out to my 20+ readers who like to comment.
I am often disgusted with the National Association of Realtors because all they know how to do is SPIN. They are not a transparent organization.
Until NAR is able to say the following words I will not associate myself with them. (I am only a member because my MLS requires it)
Using a Realtor is the best choice when buying/selling real estate, but it is not for everyone just like many other services are not for everyone.
SO I was reading a blog post on Inman about how things are going in real estate from an online perspective. I agree with this comment which was left by a so called VC.
Not sure why this VC went anonymous on the comment but he or she was certainly along the lines of what I am thinking.
All this capital is leading to a train wreck. Online real estate is only about a $500-750M market, $300 with Move, a few hundred more with the lead gen guys, a chunk of $ with the search engines and portals. Everything else is noise.
As a VC, I read this blog religiously and find it humorous how enamored everyone is with a few startups. But frankly, I’m struggling to find a decent business model or the right management team to fund. All this talk of new talented people entering this business. I see old real estate industry folks on one side, some newspaper jockeys on another, and then a bunch of Internet gold diggers from other verticals in the 3rd camp.
At this rate, I’ll go fund another security company or even a social networking play.
I wonder who this commenter is because I would love to chat with him/her about online real estate services.
I just got back from Warwick, Rhode Island and it took me about 2 hours. Should have taken about 50 min from Boston. I am pissed. Rhode Island Statewide MLS is making all members attend one class so they can give out MLS tokens. An MLS Token is a new system they are implementing because they no longer want members creating their own passwords. Why? Because they are loosing money with people sharing accounts. I thought this problem was sold when they implemented one login per IP address a few months ago. Guess not.
So what does this mean? Every member of Statewide MLS now needs to carry around a key chain and everytime the member wants to log into the system they need to enter their username and click their key chain provided by SAFEMLS. Can you say retarded.
SafeMLS claims this is a security measure so agents do not get listings deleted by so called hackers or people who just happen to have the member login, which is complete BS. The crap that SAFEMLS.com riffs off during the class is such crap the presenters eyes were turning brown. The presenter should have said Statewide MLS wants our product because they need to figure out how many more subscribers they can get. I bet SAFEMLS had a different power point presentation when they pitched Statewide MLS. We can make you more money by adding real paying users.
So now members are completely inconvenienced by this because if you forget your key chain they are out of luck for the day. The key chain provides random passwords. So since this new BS program is in place will Statewide MLS reduce the membership cost. I doubt it.
I hope this because a hassle for Statewide MLS because they not only have a shit MLS but now they a shit program that we have to deal with.
Hey Statewide MLS - you suck. I hope this fails and you have to hire customer service reps to handle all the calls from complaining agents.
If you look at all the sites that have been created over the last 2-3 years you might being saying to yourself WTF is this? I am not a fan of real estate search sites like Trulia because they do not really solve a problem and they will never catch on unless MLS gives them a feed. Why not go to Realtor.com, a site that has a little info on every property listed on MLS? Sure they are Web 1.0 but so is real estate. MLS rules and regulations stifle innovation and will bring down sites like search sites.
Other…
Mashing up listings with maps was so yesterday and I personally feel all they do is slow page loading. Sure it’s a great widget for Google and MSN but it’s really nothing special. What is the point of a map if you cannot display the address?
Blogs in real estate are not that cool either because Realtors are generally without a clue. When Realtors set up a blog they use it wrong. Find me a Realtor blog that talks about community or interesting things. Most talk about a listing they are marketing.
How to make Web 2.0 better?
Brokerage sites need to implement recommendation scripts like Amazon uses. “Other Products You May Like” can be “Other Homes You May Like.”
This is will certainly solve a problem and I would love to do this but I do not have the time.
Another article that touches on some points we have been addressing while developing our new platform, which should release in a couple of months. Check this and give it a read.
Cheers.