Rob Hahn My friend John is moving from Cambridge, MA to some tiny little town on the Illinois/Iowa border whose name I can’t remember — possibly because I don’t believe he ever told me. The move is on account of his academic wife getting a job at the local college — and seriously, if you think you’ve … Read more
Thanks to Pat Kitano, I saw the cute YouTube ad that San Francisco based Rofo.com produced. Pat already discussed the video itself, and how it shows that smart, creative people can product TV-quality advertising on a fraction of the budget. I agree with him on all points there. All I want to do is wish … Read more
The latest Pew Internet & American Life Project survey on search engine usage has been released (PDF). (H/T: Joe Ferrara) I think they provide an invaluable service in terms of gathering the data. But their analysis ah… leaves much to be desired. To wit: WHY ARE MORE INTERNET USERS NOW INTEGRATING SEARCH INTO THEIR ONLINE … Read more
So let’s say that some brave soul out there has decided to gamble away his life at the urgings of a certain blogger who works for a certain data company in New York City. To him, I offer my deepest sympathies. But courage! If this works, please do remember to look down upon us peons … Read more
In Part 1 of this series, I put forth the notion that a real estate company built on the law firm model — rainmaking partners + salaried associates + support staff — could work. The main requirement is that there is some sort of a competitive advantage that arises from the structure of the partnership … Read more
Jonathan Washburn (whom I have named J-Dub, without his permission or approval) of ActiveRain and Localism hath sounded a call to arms for NAR to buy out Move, Inc (NASDAQ: MOVE). J-Dub makes some good points (and the commenters on the thread support him) — namely, that Realtors hate Realtor.com, and that Realtor.com has lost … Read more
[This is not related to real estate in any way.] Sometimes, you read something written by otherwise intelligent-seeming people that makes you wonder what the hell happened to rationality. This is one of those somethings: It is not just that the big three ignored the future. From where I stand, they also seem to have … Read more
It must be zeitgeist, a change in the real estate weltanschauung. I wrote a long post back in March of 2008 having a conversation with Mike Farmer on his original Biz 2.0 post on the Bloodhound Blog. He then responded with some additional thoughts. I had a 1500 word draft that wasn’t even halfway finished, … Read more
An exchange with Mike Farmer in the comments section of this post over on Homegain triggered some thinking on my part. The Reader’s Digest version of what went on before: Louis thought there was too much hype about marketing, and not enough attention on the craft of being a realtor. I responded that one reason … Read more