Wav Group

In response to: Don't Bother Me! I'm Researching

Excellent post, Marilyn. I waiver back and forth on this topic but currently am thinking MLSs should not be playing the role of destination site. The analogy to the BMW site might be closer to one of the franchises or mega-brokers than the MLS. How would Toyota feel if AIAM or some other trade group started a web site providing deep data on cars to help consumers research the various competitors' offerings before contacting one of the manufacturer sites directly? I'm guessing they would say that wasn't the role of the trade association.

Admittedly, this analogy isn't perfect either, because the MLS is more than a trade association in many cases, providing some of the core tools to help members create the marketplace for real estate. The analogy between MLSs and the NASDAQ or NYSE may be more apt, but, even there, those exchanges are not providing consumer-facing tools for comparing stocks or choosing among member firms. They supply raw data for others to process and tools for trades, but that's about it.

On the other hand, I do think a Consumer Reports type site for real estate would be very cool. The expert content could be contributed by the MLS members, be they listing brokers, buyer brokers, appraisers, statisticians, etc. All the content could be branded, giving the contributors reason to submit the content, and the best content could be voted to the top. The MLS, as one of the first real estate social networks, is the logical place to try to build such a site given the critical mass of experts in any given market, but the question always returns to whether broekrs will want the MLS to use their money to promote the MLS brand ahead of their own.

I hope to post the videos from our panel discussion on this topic at the FBS Blog in the next few days, and Victor was a great contributor. It should be interesting to see if a discussion generates from the videos as well. Again, great post, this remains an interesting topic.

In response to: Social Networks for building Real Estate Communities

From http://www.iconnectdots.com
If the web is truly going to become a place where we can move about freely -- instead of deciding which social network or hottest-n-latest service to use and then investing in that closed proprietary network -- then open standards all meshed together and portable are what we need...and now.

Many people I follow have written extensively about "profile" and participation fatigue" since we users are more and more reluctant to join yet another new service and do what's necessary to maintain it and get all of our friends to join.

Mark Canter wrote this: you and I are investing ourselves all over the web in currently non-integrated sets of services that don't talk to one another for the most part. In order to move toward a time when all of these different services allow YOU to coordinate, orchestrate and integrate your online life, there are sets of behind-the-scenes services that have to interoperate seamlessly so YOU can "own" your digital life and parcel pieces out to others with whom you'll allow access to some, most or all of it.

As more social networks, services and applications arrive that ask you and I to invest time, energy and effort to participate with them online, they'll fail if an interoperating mesh of services doesn't exist since you and I will begin to resist joining and maintaining without that interoperating just happening seamlessly on the backend.

If you're thinking of building out just such a network or community site, you must choose a platform vendor that understands the mesh is needed and is working toward a set of industry standards comprising a mesh of interoperating services. To do otherwise would see you not choosing a strategic vendor and you'll paint yourself into a corner. You'll then have an even bigger mess on your hands when your users realize what you've done and stop joining and participating in favor of those are open and connected or completely abandon your service.

In response to: Twitterstate: Twitter for Real Estate Professionals

Computers exist everywhere
It took me a while to figure out that wherever I go, whenever I want, Ive access to one of the worlds most powerful computers. Its not an IBM Mainframe that spans my whole living room, nor Googles search engine, and not the latest Alienware box. Its Twitter.

Social Computing Defined
At Forrester, we define Social Computing as: - A social structure in which technology puts power in communities, not institutions. - and this is true for social networks esp small and fast ones like Twitter.

What Google cant do
While Google is great for finding information and websites, its NOT great for getting opinion, hearing nuance, or telling me relational information. With Twitter, I can ask information about opinions, and receive responses from real people (many I know, most I dont) that often have first hand experience with the question at hand. Lastly, real people understand detailed and complicated questions and situations, and the more people answering, the more chance of you getting your answer.

In response to: Social Networks for building Real Estate Communities

From softratty.com, one story from last week for its potentially lasting implications was the formation of the OpenSocial Foundation, a nonprofit group to support the OpenSocial initiative that Google kick-started last year to promote a universal standard for developer applications on social-networking sites.

In what CNET News.com reporter Caroline McCarthy termed "the Justice League of social media," the OpenSocial Foundation was announced by partners Google, Yahoo, and News Corp.'s MySpace.com and is expected to be formed within 90 days, with more partners from across the Web on board.

Its specific goal is "to ensure the neutrality and longevity of OpenSocial as an open, community-governed specification for building social applications across the Web." And it's a particularly crucial move for Google, which has been eager to emphasize that OpenSocial is a community standard, not a Mountain View, Calif.-based project.

Of course, noticeably absent from the current partner list is Facebook, the site that started the social-networking platform craze in the first place. OpenSocial was a response to that mania, and an attempt to come up with some continuity among the disparate developer strategies.

And Facebook won't likely be joining the OpenSocial Foundation, at least in the near term. "As the largest contributor to the memecached system, Facebook has long been a leader and supporter of open-source initiatives but will not join the foundation," a statement from the company read. "The company will continue to evaluate partnership opportunities that will benefit the 300,000 Facebook Platform developers while improving the Facebook user experience."

Practically speaking, OpenSocial competes with Facebook's system by letting user data cross-pollinate between sites and services using a single API (application programming interface). A photo-sharing application, for example, could tap into the social graphs of Orkut, Bebo, MySpace, Ning, or other services without any code changes.

But News.com's Dan Farber points out that Google is making Facebook's choice regarding OpenSocial more difficult by granting the OpenSocial code to the nonprofit foundation, which will be "independent of any undue influence by any one party," according to the Opensocial.org Web site.
Still, News.com's Charles Cooper questions Facebook's decision to sit this one out. And at least one reader agrees that Facebook, while a hit, might just be a "flavor of the month" in the grand scheme of things.

"The majority of its users are in a demographic that can change their mind in an instant, leaving Facebook wondering

In response to: MLS Consumer Website Research Released

I am totally impressed by this effort, the detail, and the well though out format and presentation! It's hard to have 57 pages of meat and no filler, but you have accomplished that. Execllent Job and a "must read" for real estate leaders, especially MLS Executives and Boards.

In response to: MLS Consumer Website Research Released

This is a bad ass report!

In response to: MLS Vendor Selections

Hmmm, really? I definitely agree that MLS conversions are difficult, but I wonder if the bigger companies are actually doing more conversions and so that explains the higher failure rate. I know we've installed a bunch of new systems the last many years and wonder if the other companies have as well.

In response to: SentriLock goes public with major anouncemnt

The survey of local and state REALTOR Association Executives (AEs) and MLS executives was conducted by the National Association of REALTORS Marketing Research Department. SentriLock was ranked the number one lickbox provider in four out of five key areas including lockbox product, service, system and overall satisfaction.

read more at http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080312005311&newsLang=en