Image via Lovely Petal (Flickr: Samiksha)

On Twitter tonight, Sue Adler (@sueadler) says nonchalantly:

Shocking to find MY town pgs & photos copied exactly on another’s site. Hoping this agent, who I know well, hired someone & wasnt aware. hmm

That ain’t a “hmm” Sue — that should be a, “I’ve been robbed!”  That’s outright copyright violation — a theft of your intellectual property.

I know it happens.  Copyright violation on the Internet is not a matter of “IF” it happens, but “WHEN” it happens to you.  A lot of the violations are these automated spam blogs (“splogs”) that go out, scrape content, put it on a page to drive Google rankings and make a few bucks off of advertising.  In less common cases, it’s someone who just really liked your post or your content or something and thought it’s no big deal to copy the whole thing and put it on their site, as long as they link back to you and give you credit.

Except that it’s not okay, since Google punishes duplicate content.  To be sure, there is some dispute as to whether the original copyright holder gets hit with the penalty or not… but since anyone who claims to know exactly how the Google algorithms work who doesn’t have a valid Google Employee ID is probably talking out of his ass, why take the chance?  It isn’t as if the plagiarist is doing something legitimate to begin with.

As it happens, there are others who are far more expert than I in this area of what to do and how to protect yourself.  So here are a few links you might want to browse if you think someone (or multiple someones) is copying your content wholesale:

• What To Do When Someone Steals Your Content by Lorelle.  This is a fantastic, detailed post, with helpful tips, even a form email to send to the offending party, useful links, and just a wealth of information.  Start here.
• Copyscape.  This is a website that can simplify the effort of tracking who out on the Web is stealing your content.  I’ve managed to find quite a few of my blogposts on random splogs through this tool.  It also has helpful links right into WHOIS and other tools to simplify gathering information you’ll want and need to pursue the matter further.
• Chilling Effects.  This is for those who want to get a bit deeper into some of the legal issues in copyright infringement and piracy.  They also provide a great FAQ on copyright on piracy.
• Splogs: Spam Blogs and Stolen Content.  More of a call to arms, but there’s a lot of great information on this post, as well as links to other useful sites and tools.

I’m certain there are other great resources on the Web and elsewhere.  I’d appreciate any comments sharing ones you’ve found.

Fight Back; Content Theft is NOT Sharing

I know the spirit of sharing on the Web generally and in the RE.net more specifically are very strong.  Many of us are constantly sharing ideas, giving away “intellectual property”, and go to REBarCamps where we give stuff away for free all the time without any expectation of (immediate) gain.

But stealing content outright is not sharing.  I’m not talking about excerpting a paragraph or two to make a point here.  I’m talking about copying entire blogposts, pictures and all.  I’m talking about taking another agent’s local market information lock, stock and barrel and passing it off as your own.  Even if you include a token link to my original post, or put up some little piece of crap like “originally posted on XYZ blog”, you’re stealing my traffic, stealing my ability to interact with readers, and should anyone actually comment on your copy of my post, preventing the community from sharing ideas with each other.

As in all things, you can go overboard with trying to fight content theft.  You can’t live with paranoia all the time.  You have to use your judgment as to whether the offender was trying to steal your intellectual property, or made an honest mistake.

But fight back.  For all of us.  I for one plan on starting.  Have sent one letter so far tonight to a splog operator.  We’ll see if he takes it down.

-rsh

Buried within last week’s firestorm ignited by a couple of posts over at AgentGenius was an actually important issue that all social media practitioners and companies thinking about social media need to think about.

When is a company or an organization responsible for the social media actions of its employees?

Now, while I have gone to law school, and am a member of the Bar, I am not a lawyer, and what follows should not be construed as legal advice or any such thing.  Consult your own attorneys for their take on the issue.

From where I stand, I believe the answer will depend largely on three factors: (a) the employee’s “day job” responsibilities, (b) the “social media act” at issue, and (c) employer’s level of knowledge.  But this is a first stab, and I would love thoughts/comments from the readers, especially from those who are practicing attorneys.

Respondeat Superior, in Brief

The law that typically governs employer liability is the common law of respondeat superior.  From Wikipedia, we get this definition:

“Respondeat superior” (Latin: “let the master answer”) is a legal doctrine which states that, in many circumstances, an employer is responsible for the actions of employees performed within the course of their employment.

To determine whether the employer should be held liable for an employee’s action, the courts would look at three factors (again, Wikipedia):

1. Was the act committed within the time and space limits of the agency?
2. Was the offense incidental to, or of the same general nature as, the responsibilities the agent is authorized to perform?
3. Was the agent motivated to any degree to benefit the principal by committing the act?

The prevailing literature on employer liability, however, seems to suggest that the key issue is whether the “bad act” was committed when the “person was on the job”.  Incidental vs. general nature still goes to whether the employee was acting within the scope of employment; the question of agent’s intent also goes to the scope of employment issue.

There will be a quiz!

The classic case usually used in hypotheticals goes something like this.

A delivery driver for Company XYZ hits someone while trying to make a delivery — employer is liable, as the driver was clearly acting “within scope of employment”.

A delivery driver for Company XYZ goes out on a date with his girlfriend, ends up drinking, and while driving her home, hits a pedestrian  — employer probably not liable, as the driver was on personal time, not doing anything connected to his job as a delivery guy, and so on.

Then the tricky stuff explores whether Company XYZ is liable if the driver was drunk against company policy (likely yes), or if the driver was on personal time but doing something work-related (likely yes), and so on.

An important exception to employer liability is the doctrine of “frolic and detour” (one of my favorite legal doctrines, as it involves the word frolic) where if the employee, in the course of employment, goes off on a substantial detour and engages in activities that have nothing to do with work, then the employer is not liable.  Turns out, this concept becomes key.

Why Social Media and Respondeat Superior Is Difficult

For the most part, employer liability is relatively straightforward.  The question of whether someone was “on the job” or not is more or less clear for most employees as the doctrine of frolic and detour illustrates.  If your job is to put an engine together at Factory ABC, then the fact that you’re drinking at Random Pub probably means that you’re on “frolic and detour”.  If you were at the Factory, you were on the job; if you were doing something that had to do with putting engines together, you were on the job.

But when your job is doing social media for a company, it isn’t at all clear when your job ends and your personal time begins.

David Armano? Or Edelman?

There is an old conundrum within social media marketing of when a person is working to further her company brand vs. her personal brand.  Mike Arauz of Undercurrent says: “Our company’s online brand is really the sum of the online brands of the individuals who work there.”  Similarly, when David Armano of Edelman is blogging (on his personal blog) and tweeting (on his personal Twitter account), doesn’t Edelman the company benefit from his activities?  In some real way, the brand of Edelman is impacted (mostly positively) by David Armano’s private personal social media actions.

This is even when the person expressly disclaims any connection, as David does on his blog where he says right on the front page: This is my personal blog where I share thoughts + opinions that are solely my own.

I do the same on this blog, and have even when I was working for a company not my own.  But I’d be lying if I said my company, 7DS Associates, is not impacted by my blogging here or my Twitter activities or even my Facebook and Blip.fm activities.

This is not to say that respondeat superior somehow changes to “if the company benefits, even in some remote way, there is liability”.  Scope of employment still matters, of course.  But when your job is to promote the company, its agenda, and its products and services by the use of social media, then it isn’t clear when “scope of employment” ends.

The reason is that social media demands the elimination of the artificial barrier between the Company and the Community.  The driving principle behind Cluetrain, the fountainhead of social media, is to be authentic.  Human beings want to talk to other human beings.  That’s why Gary Vaynerchuk’s obsession with the NY Jets is part and parcel of the Wine Library story.  And why David Armano talking about music is a good thing for his employer.

As a result, social media employees appear to me to be 24 x 7 x 365 employees.  They’re always on the job, except when they’re offline (which likely means they’re asleep).  Frolic and detour — as long as one is online — simply does not apply to social media professionals, because social media itself includes so much that would be considered frolic and detour under traditional job descriptions.

So… Automatic Liability?

Does that mean that the company would always be automatically liable if the bad act was done via social media by an employee?  That seems a stretch.

Take a fictitious employee, John, who is a junior marketer at Major Brokerage XYZ.  One of his duties is to update the company blog.  One night, after a few beers, John goes on Facebook and downloads some pirated MP3’s.  Is Major Brokerage XYZ liable for copyright infringement because John is a “social media employee” and the bad act took place online?

I doubt that very much.  Even though his copyright infringement happened online, and even though John is a “social media employee”, I do think most people (and most courts) would see what he did as being outside the scope of employment.  Of course, much depends on the specific facts: if he used a company computer, or if Major Brokerage XYZ had an internal library of pirated MP3’s contributed by its employees, etc.  But generally, pirating MP3’s on one’s personal laptop at night is probably not going to implicate Major Brokerage XYZ.

Back to the Future

Twitter ipsa loquitur...

Seems to me that when it comes to social media and online, we’ll end up re-plumbing the original understanding of employer responsibility under common law.

First, I believe that the actual responsibilities of the employee should matter.  John, in the example above, is a junior marketer with a fairly limited “social media” responsibility: update the company blog.  If he were, instead, the VP of Marketing or the Director of Social Media, that might alter the result somewhat.

In my mind, the reason is that because social media so erodes the barrier between the personal and the corporate, greater authority in social media should carry greater responsibility.  Presumably the Director of Social Media would have the authority to use the entire range of tools available to the social media practitioner to promote the company, its brand, and its products/services.  She might be empowered to do things that a junior account executive might not be, especially since she may be pushing the envelope to see what works and what does not.

Furthermore, there is something to the notion that responsibility is correlated to benefit: to the extent that the company benefits, so it should also be responsible.  A junior marketer may yield precious little benefit to the corporate brand; the Director of Social Media might deliver enormous benefits.

Second, I think the actual nature of the “bad act” will be relevant — because it sort of goes to the “frolic and detour” doctrine.  Even though social media is infused with all sorts of personal things that would be frolic and detour, some things simply don’t match all that well.  There is a world of difference, in my mind, between defamation and downloading pirated MP3’s for example.  The former is much closer to the benefits gained by the Company by the activities of the Director of Social Media.

Third, I believe the company’s actual knowledge (or the infamous “should have known” standard of knowledge) will matter.  If the company encourages the use of Facebook by all of its customer service employees, and one of them engages in personal defamation on “personal time”, it’s hard to say the company did not know that she was using Facebook.  But if the Director of Social Media turns out to have a secret identity as a black-hat hacker who, as part of a social network of hackers, illegally broke into a bank’s system… boy, it’s awfully hard to hold the company responsible for something it had no knowledge of and had no reason to know.

The Law vs. Ethics

Now, that’s the legal angle to this whole issue.  What about the ethical one?

Suppose that Brokerage XYZ never knew that its Director of Social Media, who is active in all sorts of channels, is an active contributor to a vile racist social network in his own name — which of course, is connected to the Company’s brand through the power of Google.

There’s nothing illegal about that; this is America after all, and one is allowed to have vile racist views.

A client of Brokerage XYZ discovers this vile racist social network, finds that the Director of Social Media is a key organizer of it, and is enormously offended.  He demands an apology from Brokerage XYZ.  Is the Brokerage ethically bound to offer an apology?  Leave aside for the moment the question of whether that is good business practice or not (it is); is Brokerage XYZ somehow responsible (albeit not liable, since no illegality took place) for the bad acts of its Social Media Director?

While we might be tempted to answer, “Of course”… consider carefully what it means for a company to be “responsible” even if not legally liable for the social media actions of its employees.

For example, if a real estate agent, who has been encouraged to use Twitter and Facebook, posts wrong information on her Facebook profile that misled a consumer… what does it mean for the brokerage to be “responsible”?

I don’t have the answers [ED: what's new?] but these questions need to be explored as the technology and the business processes around them mature.  And if the embers of various flamewars can be coaxed into providing light… well, then the heat was worth it.

I look forward to your thoughts.

-rsh

Get yer popcorn here! Fresh piping hot popcorn!

Earlier today, we had a bit of a brouhaha among the Twitterati of the real estate set.  The genesis was this video blog by Greg Cooper in which he blasted Todd Carpenter, attacked him personally, and laid the heavy artillery on to NAR.  Which then brought responses from various members of the RE.net, some friendly to Todd and others hostile to him, and resulted in this post by Bill Lublin.

Periodically, it seems we get one of these little kerfuffles in the RE.net; I personally think it’s pretty healthy.  As far as the specifics of the Todd vs. Greg deal and all of that, the whole thing is likely blown way out of proportion, and others will address the “personal vs. corporate” burdens on someone using his personal channels.  I hear Jay Thompson is working on a post.  Suffice to say that Todd is a great guy, and if any “embarrassment” resulted, I’m 100% positive he did not intend it.  So count me in Team @Tcar as far as that goes.

But the real issue I’d like to discuss is actually from a comment by Ines Hegedus-Garcia to Bill’s post which goes:

But again, that’s not the point – it’s not about Todd, it’s about the flaming of an individual on a public forum that totally crosses the line. (And the fact that is Todd makes it all the worse)

And via Twitter, there are a number of folks who thought Greg’s post was over the top, unfair, and illegitimate.  Criticism, it goes, should be “constructive and thoughtful” of else, not worth the time at all.

This is where I part company with polite society.

Flamewars: The Sport of the Interwebs

Flaming, criticism, unfair personal attacks on an individual is a bedrock tradition of the Interwebs from its origins as something over-caffeinated geeks engaged in late at night in computer labs across American campuses.  The same forces that make the Internet such a wonderful medium for communication and community building make it also the Wild Wild West as it comes to personal attacks.  Expecting parliamentary debate on the wild ethers is an exercise in self-delusion.

The Internet, with its anonymity, its spontaneity, and its lack of real responsibility is hardly the place to expect Plato’s Symposium.  It’s gonna be rough; some folks are gonna get nasty with differing levels of snark.  Some people are gonna go over the edge, while others are going to be the wise voices of moderation.  That chaos, that rawness, is what makes social media “work” as well as it does to form relationships.  It’s people being real, and in being real, being authentic.

Some people are real assholes.  (I’m not suggesting Greg is an asshole, by the way; I thought his rant by Internet standards was pretty tame, actually.  But I do spend time at DailyKos sometimes….)  They’re going to rant and rave and behave like real assholes.

That doesn’t mean that they’re wrong, or that they don’t have a point.

Tactics of Flaming and Personal Attacks

As Melissa Del Gaudio (@startabuzz) said via Twitter, flaming rarely hurts the target but often rebounds to the flamer.  That is true.  It is almost never a wise strategy to go ad hominem.

Two reasons why personal attacks are bad tactics.  First, they inevitably raise the rancor of the target’s friends and associates.  That usually results in personal attacks back.  Second, and more importantly, personal attacks usually obscure the point you’re trying to make.  Grab a passerby and say, “This is the year 2010″ and you’re likely to get total agreement (along with a stare for stating the obvious); grab the same passerby and say, “You @#)8%@#$ moron, don’t you %)(*#@$ get that this is the year 20-f’ing-10???” and they pay more attention to the @$*#@)(% part than to the “2010″ part.

Now, there are times when flaming and personal attacks can be highly effective, because even as neutral bystanders might think you’re just being a jerk, partisans and people more likely to agree with you anyhow may become energized by the attack and start spreading the meme around in a less confrontational way.  The best modern example of this is how the Left treated Sarah Palin in 2008 (and still does); the Right for its part successfully attacked John Kerry via personal attacks in 2004.

From a strictly tactical perspective, a marketer wise in the way of social media should at least be aware of when ad hominem attacks could be effective in achieving a particular set of goals, even as she understands that she may be playing with a double-edged sword.

Bad Tactics Is Not the Same As Illegitimate

What I would warn the RE.net — and anyone else for the matter who might be reading this — of is not to equate bad tactics with illegitimacy.  A complaint loaded down with personal attacks might still have a valid point buried within it.

Especially those who are in the business of helping companies use social media for branding and engagement need to exercise judgment as to what is and is not legitimate.  Taking an example from real estate, suppose a past client were to get on Facebook or on a national blog of some sort and post something like this:

“I can’t stand that ***** bitch So-and-So; she’s the worst f’ing realtor in history, who kills puppies for fun.  She priced my ****** house so ***** low just to move the damn thing with no effort — greedy lazy selfish bitch!”

Understandably, So-and-So’s first reaction would be horror mixed with anger.  Personal attacks abound!  Yet, there is a valid point there.  Maybe she did price the house too low.  Maybe she didn’t do a good enough job explaining the price, or market conditions, or whatever.  Maybe she needs to take another look at what happened in that transaction.

A response like, “Well, that just crosses the line!  I’m not listening!” is justifiable — but shortsighted.  Some recognition of the fact that flaming and personal attacks are part and parcel of the Internet would likely do So-and-So better.

For example, earlier today, Greg Swann of Bloodhound Blog (a national real estate blog) just laid it on yours truly:

But, alas, the Shortbus set doesn’t have the vision to come up with a truly idiotic argument against using mobile devices to market real estate. This honor was earned by Rob Hahn, an attorney in New York City who doubles as a vendorslut consultant or a consultant to vendorsluts or some bizarre combination of the two.

Among the clever epithets he came up with were “The Inglorious R.O.B.” and “The Ignominious R.O.B.”  Brilliant!  Wordsmithing at its finest!

Now, I dig a good flamewar like any redblooded partisan of the political blogosphere, but in this case… I’m not that interested.  I’m rather more interested to find out if the point he makes exposes a flaw in my way of thinking.  Personally, I haven’t seen anything buried in his rants that makes me change my mind.  The rest of it, all the personal crap, I lack the measure of respect for the critic that would make such things sting.

Frankly, that’s what I’d like to advise the RE.net when it comes to periodic flamewars.  By all means, get into it — rally around the family, with a pocketful of shells, and all that.  But don’t lose sight of whatever point the ranting flamer is trying to make.  Stomp him all you want, but don’t rule such things “out of bounds” or “over the line” or some such.  Flaming hurts the flamer; but ignoring substance hurts all of us.

As Far As Greg vs. Todd…

Greg went overboard; of that, there’s no doubt.  But there IS an important point buried in his rants.  Jay Thompson (@phxreguy) is writing a post on that, I believe.

Does an organization — in this case NAR — bear any responsibility if an employee says something via personal social media channels that results in negative impact?

That question is a valid one; and it’s one worth discussing.

The rest of it, the personal attacks, the name-calling… well, Greg… that was bad tactics.  As you will find out.  But on the actual valid issue you raised, we all will benefit by discussing that in the days ahead.

-rsh

This post by Marty Neumeier on @Issue (from which the above graphic cometh) might be the most interesting branding-related insight I’ve read in quite some time.  Go now and read the whole thing.  I’ll wait.

Let’s assume that he can back up the assertion via survey data, focus group data, and actual market results.  The conclusions are very cool and very interesting indeed.

If They Don’t Hate It, You’re Not Doing It Right

The most interesting insight for me was this:

This is because radical differentiation doesn’t test well in focus groups. When you ask people what they want, they’ll invariably say they want more of the same, only with better features, a lower price, or both. This is not a recipe for radical differentiation. This is a recipe for me-too products with pint-sized profit potential.

Marty Neumeier is talking about focus groups, of course, not actual consumers in the marketplace.  But there is a lesson to be learned here.

Brand differentiation inherently means “different” — and people don’t necessarily like different.  The famous Henry Ford quote, that if he had asked people what they wanted, they’d have said faster horses applies here.  Real innovation, the kind that disrupts markets, the kind that establishes real industry leadership, means that some people just aren’t gonna care for it because it’s weird, it’s a little nuts, and it’s different.

Real Estate Brands & Companies

In all of the past discussions about brand and branding in real estate, and how little real estate brand means today, I don’t know that we’ve ever thought of things in quite this way.  But if you do… there are only two well-known brands in real estate that draw any sort of negativity for being different: Keller Williams, and Redfin.

When Keller Williams first appeared on the scene, various people within the industry called it a cult, a gimmick, crazy-wrapped-inside-cheezy, and so on.  Agent teams — a construct that some brokerages and brands fear and dislike — are baked into the KW DNA in a way that they are in no competing national brand.  I myself have scoffed at some of KW’s efforts that placed an agent front and center in national ad campaigns, thereby neutering the value of the brand itself.  Yet, a few years later, KW is one of the fastest growing real estate brands, and its brokers and agents are starting to dominate top performer rankings.  There’s something there.

Redfin was hated by some right from the start, and even today, there are plenty of detractors.  Their agents are supposed to be morons, the rebate model is stupid, and Redfin is just a web-powered buyer agency, and so on.  And yet, I personally have never seen a more active base of customers who are so willing to recommend Redfin to one and all, at least in social media.  Redfin users are constantly posting on message boards and blog comments, telling others to use Redfin if it’s available in their market.  There’s something there.

Both KW and Redfin are about “radical differentiation” — love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re doing things that are pretty weird by traditional real estate standards.  That doesn’t mean, of course, that they’re going to succeed necessarily.  As the chart shows, you could be Different but Not Good.  But at least they’re on the Different side of the chart.

In contrast, I think it’s fair to say that virtually everyone else from individual agents to national brokerage brands in real estate are trying to do the “Good but Not Different” model.  They all want to be seen as professional, as advocates, as caring about customers, topnotch local experts, etc. etc. and stand out about as much as teardrops in a rainstorm.  Neumeier thinks these “Good but Not Different” companies and products are me-too brands with pint-sized profit potential.  I agree.  Because that’s what most brokerages are: me-too brands with pint-sized profit potential.

The Caveat

The biggest issue, of course, is distinguishing between Different and Good, and Different but Not Good; they look a whole lot alike, especially based on customer feedback.  As Neumeier puts it:

What makes the good-different chart tricky, though, is that some of the potential winners in the upper right corner look a lot like the dogs in the bottom right corner. The line is often blurry, and the consequences for making a bad call can be extreme. It takes an experienced innovator to know the difference – someone who can match customer comments to a previous pattern of success.

And I would add that even experienced innovators can often get it wrong.  Steve Jobs is an experienced innovator, and even he produces duds like AppleTV from time to time.

If you’re interested in playing it safe, then focus simply on being Good: efficient, fast, priced right, etc.  It might be pint-sized profit potential, but at least there is the potential for profit.  But if you’re looking to be really innovative, if you’re looking to do something no one else has done, if you’re looking to bring a new way of doing the same old thing to the market… then you’re going to want some hate, some negativity, and some criticism.  Otherwise… it’s not different enough.

The road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.

-rsh

Image: bluefin_102 ~ Mike Forsman via Flickr.com

Joel Burslem, whose intelligence is matched only by his ability to eat samgyupsal and drink soju with native Korean boys, opines on 1000watt blog that 2010 will be the year of mobile:

In my presentation yesterday at Virtual RE Bar Camp I made the case that 2010 will be the year the mobile finally matters in real estate marketing. But its not mobile by itself that matters…

2010 is the year the mobile web really begins to matter. In 2009, the mobile web grew 110 percent according to Quantcast. And just as advertising dollars flowed from print to the web, soon I suspect, they will flow from the desktop to the handset.

As much as it pains me to disagree with Joel, in this case, I’d like to offer two points to temper his (and others’) enthusiasm.

The Law Cometh

First, we all should recognize that efforts to curb or outright ban the usage of mobile devices while driving are underway in just about every state of the union.  And even diehard libertarian conservatives (like me) can get behind such proposals.  From the NY Times:

When its legislature convenes this year, Kansas will consider banning motorists from sending text messages. South Carolina will, too, and debate whether to prohibit drivers from using phones altogether, or requiring them to use hands-free devices when they call. New Jersey lawmakers have proposed banning drivers from manipulating a navigation system in a moving car.

In all, lawmakers have already proposed 200 bills to curb distracted driving, and policy analysts expect to see dozens more in the coming months. (Emphasis mine)

It is impossible to deny that using your hands and fingers to text, or to zoom in maps, or to do anything else with a mobile device while driving is a serious hazard.  One recent study showed that drivers who “text” are 23 time more likely to crash than drivers who are “not distracted”.  I don’t want to share the road with such people; I really doubt you do.  I don’t want to be driving my two boys around my neighborhood and get sideswiped by some fool looking at the Zillow App and not paying attention to the road.  Do you?

Soon to be banned...

It’s great that Joel wanted to whip out his iPhone the minute he crossed over into Canada and push one of a dozen buttons on his smartphone.  It’s a matter of time — and I think it’s months, not years — before virtually every governmental organization limits or outright bans the ability of people to use smartphones while driving, their soul be damned.

Plus, “texting” (and I include the vast majority of using any app or mobile web feature in this) while driving is well on its way to being about as socially acceptable as doing tequila shots while behind the wheel.  “I found this great house while driving around” will be met with cold stares, sudden awkward silences, and a quick change of topics in a not-too-distant future.

The Problem of Power

Solve this problem first.

Even if mobile-webbing while driving is a no-go, there is still the matter of urban residents who might be walking while using the Realtor.com App or some similar mobile web to look for condos and apartments.  Sure, that’s probably the most likely target market.  For brokerages and agents whose business is predominantly in dense urban areas, a mobile strategy probably makes a ton of sense.

However, I have had smartphones for the last four years.  In all of that time, I have used maybe 10% of what I could do with the phone because of one insurmountable reason: battery power.

My Droid barely lasts the whole day on a full charge, and that’s with the GPS turned off most of the time, no streaming video, no listening to music on the built-in player, or using the internal camera regularly.  Nearly every iPhone owner I know simply can’t be parted from their power cord, and recharges their precious battery everywhere they go.  Or, they carry bulky extra battery add-ons.

When I do use it for non-essential things, like Foursquare, or even Twitter, the key is that all of those things are non-essential.  I don’t want to miss a call, or not get an important work-related email, because I’ve been messing around with toys and fun stuff on my phone.  I doubt most consumers do.

Which raises the question of whether looking for a house is an ‘essential’ activity for most consumers.  When in the moment, when they are actively in the market and on the hunt, I suppose it could be.  But looking for a house strikes me as fundamentally different than looking for a decent restaurant nearby; it is not nearly as impulsive as finding a place to eat.  If consumers are using mobile to look for places to live, it is only at the tail end of their search process, once they’ve located the neighborhood, looked online to get a sense of the properties available for sale/rent, and are now walking around (on foot) trying to narrow things down.

Technologies like augmented reality, real estate search apps, and mobile web are all useful and will make an enormous impact… down the road sometime, once the issue of battery life is solved.  Unless I’ve missed some major announcement, that won’t be happening in 2010.  There is no breakthrough battery or power technology anywhere near the horizon.

By All Means, Do Mobile

Which is not to discourage well-capitalized companies from exploring mobile.  By all means, create a mobile app, and make sure your websites are mobile-friendly.

But given the legal and social environment, and given the technological limitations of battery life, I would urge moderation in expectation and caution in how much of your overall marketing spend you allocate towards mobile.

A brokerage like Corcoran in New York City, or Zephyr in San Francisco, should invest something into mobile if only as a learning experience.  They have the right market, the right audience profile (urban walkers), and the money with which to experiment.

But I rather doubt that 2010 will be the year to put huge bets down on mobile.  Wait to see what happens with regulations, and monitor technology news for word of a battery breakthrough.  I hate to be the killjoy partypooper, but that’s how it is.

-rsh

So how does this RPR thing affect us and our brokerage?

In part 1, I tried my level best to keep my opinions restricted to what RPR actually is, based on the demo.  And what RPR is is a fantastic piece of web engineering.  In this part, I get more into the opinionating and what Reggie Nicolay might term, “fearmongering”.

Let us examine the possible impact of RPR on brokers and agents, based on what we know thus far.

Caveat Lector: What We Know That We Don’t Know

One thing I learned at REBarCamp NYC that just happened last week, from Reggie himself, was that the Terms of Use for RPR have not yet been set.  And while the RPR has announced API’s, the terms of use on those have not been set or published.  We also don’t know what those API’s will actually do in terms of data provisioning over the API’s to third party tools or websites.

Therefore, one of the biggest pieces to the puzzle — the legal rights and responsibilities of RPR’s users — is as yet unknown, except in glimpses.  We also don’t know how flexible the RPR system will ultimately be.  It may be incredibly flexible, or it may be a closed system.

We don’t know yet whether brokerages (or even agents) can participate directly in RPR, or if they have to wait for their MLS to first sign up with RPR in order to utilize the full range of functionality.

For that matter, since all we’ve really seen is a video demo and some screenshots, we don’t really know at the end of the day what the finished product will actually look like and how it will work.

Enough caveats?  Okay, let’s get into this…

Impact on Both Brokers and Agents: The Musket Age

As I suggested at the conclusion of Part 1, RPR levels the playing field in a significant way, in much the same way that gunpowder leveled the battlefield between armored cavalry (“knights”) and peasant infantry.

Aim low! Aim low gentlemen!

The obvious impact is that the smaller, less established players gain an edge, while the larger, more established players lose competitive advantage.  This is true for both brokers and for agents.

Large brokerages, who may have invested millions of dollars over the years into a proprietary toolset that provides their agents with data, tools, attractive reports, and analytic tools will find that the little mom-n-pop down the street can now compete pretty effectively with them on the technology front.  RPR is a boon to the masses, and a curse to the classes.

Similarly, pre-RPR, some agents may invest a lot of time and money gathering data, doing analytics, and presenting them in a clear, attractive manner to their prospects and clients to differentiate themselves from other agents.  The raison d’etre of the gorgeous and powerful Reports module in RPR is to make even the newest and least experienced agent “seem professional” with the push of a button.  Reasonable people may disagree on just how much RPR’s reports will help the agent who doesn’t know what he’s doing, but I don’t really think it can be debated that there will be a leveling effect.

For both brokerages and agents, if your competitive advantage is based on data, analytics, and reports… well, then post-RPR, you’re going to have to do something to maintain that advantage to the degree you have it today.  Brokerages may need to invest in newer, better tools; agents may need to invest more time in understanding what all the pretty charts and graphs actually mean.

The key is differentiation and expert usage.  Even after the introduction of firearms, some people were better shots than others; some armies knew how to use firearms effectively, while others did not.  So the introduction of RPR isn’t the end of competition; it is the shifting of competition.

Impact on Brokers

Some of the corollary impact on brokerages — particularly large brokerages — is that once RPR’s leveling effect takes place, there is likely to be further brand erosion and pricing pressure.

As it is, real estate brokerage brands are at a nadir of power and meaning.  Most consumers have no idea what one brand stands for over another, and most don’t care.  But professionals at least did (still do) care somewhat about brokerage brand.  Quite a bit of that brand, however, in this day and age is tied up with the proprietary technology systems of the brokerage or brand.

There is a reason why brokerages and franchise brands spend millions of dollars every year building productivity tools, technology tools, and data reports for its agents.  Part of it is that these things make the agent more productive, but the other part is that having these proprietary systems helps brands recruit.

While RPR doesn’t eliminate all of these systems, it certainly brings a leveling effect into it.  Now, anything within RPR’s realm (data analytics, research on properties, research on an area, and creating reports) that is today in the province of brokerages is something that their mom-n-pop competitor down the road can also provide.  As this article on Inman (link may require subscription) points out, agents want “1) fiscal responsibility, 2) education and information, 3) brand differentiation, 4) technology, 5) marketing tools, and 6) a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.”

No, really, my brand is DIFFERENT!!!

It’s awfully difficult to have brand differentiation when #4, 5, and possibly even 6 are more or less the same across the board.  “Our sign is blue, while their sign is red” isn’t significant brand differentiation, even to the newbiest of newbie agents.

Which then means that competition for agents will shift to something else: education, training, brand recognition, a manager who’s a nice guy, and of course, money.

Today, some brokerages might justify a higher split, or charging a significant “technology fee” to provide productivity technology.  Tomorrow, unless the broker offers tools and technology over and above what any REALTOR can get from RPR, that higher cost is going to be more difficult to justify.

The smaller guys, the independent shops, they can go big game hunting post-RPR, simply by offering far higher splits much easier than they can today: “Look, what can that big broker and his 70/30 split offer you that I can’t?  We all have RPR, right?”

Impact on Agents

The leveling effect, of course, is not limited to brokerages.  Agents will also be affected, in both good and bad ways.

Knowledge Worker? Or Customer Service Rep?

The newer, less experienced, less capable agent is boosted up, while the more senior, more experienced, more capable agent is brought down.  This may not impact that many people, at the end of the day.  The more experienced agents have wider networks, are better known, and may be better able to interpret all of the data coming off of RPR than the newbie.

The real impact, I believe, is that post-RPR, the nature of the real estate agent’s work shifts decidedly away from “knowledge worker professional” to “customer service representative”.  Some skills will become far more important than others.

Today, I believe the realtor sits right in between the pure knowledge worker (like a research scientist) and a pure customer service rep (like a salesman at Nordstrom’s).  She has to know the market, be able to interpret/present data, do asset pricing, do research, etc. while doing client hand-holding, staying in touch, and keeping the clients happy throughout a difficult process.  Those agents who are using data tools heavily gain a competitive advantage over those who don’t because they can appear like knowledgeable experts while others will have a harder time of doing so.

Post-RPR, that gap is narrowed.  The whole reason why the Reports exist is to make it easier for agents to look like an expert, even if they are not.  Pricing opinions can be backed up with official-looking RVM estimates, that takes the realtor’s own views and opinions into account.  Unless you are a moron who has trouble tying your own shoes, chances are that you can look and sound quite convincingly like a market expert given tools of that quality.

Which, then, puts greater emphasis on the customer service side of the equation, as well as on the skills that an expert systems technology (like the RVM) could not duplicate — for example, negotiation skills.

What to Do About All This?

It isn’t clear right now that there is anything anyone can do about all this just yet.  RPR has been all the talk, and the demo is seriously impressive.  But it isn’t live just yet.  The actual production software may have more features, or fewer features; it might actually suck in practice.  Who knows?  I still think RPR in its current incarnation is DOA (as will be made clear in future parts), but one never knows what could happen.

Having said that, if you’re a brokerage, you need to be thinking about both scenarios post-RPR.  Because even if RPR, LLC goes down in flames, the energy and the possibilities that the concept and business model of RPR have unleashed are here to stay.

How do you differentiate yourself on technology?  How important is that in your recruiting, and in your compensation structure?  If you’re in a cooperating MLS market, what do you need to do to have competitive advantage in a level playing field?  If you’re not in a cooperating MLS market, your REALTOR agents will still have access to a pretty sweet set of data and mapping tools — is that a factor in your competitiveness?  You might even want to be thinking about what sorts of alternative business models the existence of RPR (or something like it) in your market will allow you to have.

At a minimum, your senior staff should be debating these things and putting together a plan for whatever comes down the pike.

If you’re an agent, you also need to be thinking about both the cooperating and non-cooperating scenarios.  You need to be looking at the materials you are providing to your clients to see how competitive they are to what the RPR will offer for free not just to you but to every single REALTOR competitor in your market.  You need to be thinking where you will shift your competitive efforts, if data and technology tools aren’t going to yield the marginal returns as they once did.

The one thing I know you cannot do is to pretend this doesn’t exist.  You cannot bury your head in the sand and ignore the fact that the world is changing around you.

Your thoughts and comments and criticisms are, as always, welcome.

-rsh

Let me tell you who my sponsors are...

While I’m recuperating from Rebarcamp NY and Inman Connect, and working on the next chapter of the RPR reviews, I thought I’d post something that crossed my virtual desk because, well, I feel like it.

I’ve heard from a couple of people during Inman week that some of the more prominent voices (and honestly, it doesn’t matter who, so don’t ask me) in the real estate space are paid to mention specific companies and products in their public speaking and public blogging activities.  Again, since I’m interested in discussing the principles here, names and identities are wholly unimportant.

In some cases, there isn’t a direct payment of cash, but there may be other sorts of compensation — revenue share on the back-end, cross-marketing arrangements, and the like.

Question is, should these arrangements be disclosed, and if so, how much disclosure of what sorts of relationships is appropriate?

Sponsored Blogging Disclosure Policies

As it happens, in the general “social media” space, there is much heat and light around this topic.  In fact, IZEA created DisclosurePolicy.org to drive the initiative forward, and its blog is full of interesting information on the topic, including videos like this one from the Federal Trade Commission:

Presumably, even real estate bloggers should disclose when they have received cash, gifts, or other compensation for a blogpost (or a tweet?).

This doesn’t strike me as particularly controversial.  Some people may believe in sponsored blogging; others may not.  But even those who do engage in it, like Chris Brogan, are in favor of disclosure.  It is awfully hard to argue against disclosure.

Limits of Disclosure?

The issue is whether such disclosure extends only to blogging.

For example, I get invited to speak at conferences and events from time to time.  And I go to various REBarcamps throughout the calendar year, and I often speak at those.

If I mention a company or a product as something that a broker or a realtor should investigate, what disclosure should I have to make?

This is an easy one for me personally since no one pays for my opinions, and no one has offered me anything as compensation for a mention — either on this blog, the 7DS blog, or in any public speaking appearances.  (Although, if you’d like to throw piles of money my way for whatever, I’ll listen even if I decide against it, as I’m likely to do.)

But let’s say for the sake of discussion that my friend Eric Stegemann, owner of Tribus, is paying me $5,000 a month to promote Tribus to my audience at Barcamp or at Inman.  (Which he is not.)  Do I have to disclose that?  If so, how?

What if he’s not paying me cash, but offering me a 10% revenue share on any sale directly attributable to my promoting Tribus in a REBC session?

What if Eric isn’t paying me one way or the other, but I’m a passive equity investor in Tribus and stand to gain if his company goes up in value?  (I’m not, by the way.)

Yes, Rob, I owe you many drinks...

What if Eric isn’t paying me upfront or in the back end, but just buying me nice dinners and drinks every time I see him at an event?  (He needs to buy me more nice dinners and drinks actually, now that I think about it….)  Does that need to be disclosed?

What if Eric bought me a Coke one time six months ago?  Does that need to be disclosed?

At some point, there are limits to disclosure.  If, as is the case in reality, Eric just happens to be a friend of mine, and I do genuinely think his system has merit in many cases, so I mention Tribus, praise it even, and Eric happens to mention me or my company to his contacts, audience members, and the like, and there is no “commercial relationship” between us, I think requiring disclosure is a little bit silly.

At the same time, however, some types of relationships really do need to be disclosed.  If a company is paying a well-known public speaker to promote its product, that surely needs to be disclosed.  But how?  Speaking in front of 500 people isn’t like putting up a blogpost; it’s difficult to have a “disclosure policy” when speaking in person.

So… how should such disclosure work, assuming that certain kinds of commercial relationships need to be disclosed?  And what sorts of relationships should be disclosed at all?

I’m interested in your thoughts.  Comment away!

-rsh

All your castles are belonging to us now!

After a fairly lengthy silence, the team at RPR has released a deluge of new information on their new blog.  A couple of things before we delve in.

First, Reggie Nicolay and his team deserve a ton of credit for the new blog.  It’s well-designed, the content is rich and detailed, and many of the tools I would expect from a professional social media engagement site are there.  So kudos to Reggie and the gang on the marketing side.  (Minor quibble: can you not use videos that can be embedded? Or provide more sharing tools, like Wordpress, Posterous, and the like?  The goal of RPR blog isn’t to drive traffic, right, but to get the word out?)

Second, from the movie of a live demo of the software, it seems evident that the development team has not had a easy and relaxing holidays.  They’ve been hard at work, and what I saw on the demo (we’ll spill many pixels on this) is slick, polished, and truly excellent.  They too deserve immense credit for what they’ve managed to accomplish in such a short period of time.

Now, as you probably know, I’m on the skeptical side of things as far as RPR is concerned, having announced its death and all.  And the demo itself, as amazing as it is, doesn’t completely change my mind on that front.  However, from the start, I have had nothing but praise for the software itself, and I’d like to make that crystal clear:  The RPR software is by far the most impressive piece of design and web development I have seen in real estate since the launch of Trulia.  I have nothing bad to say about it as a piece of software.

In this part, I’d like to simply review the RPR based on the demo that was recently posted.  Since I haven’t driven it myself, I’m not clear on what I may be missing.  So keep that in mind as you read.

Let’s dive in.

The Demo Overview

First of all, if you haven’t seen the RPR demo yet, you really need to go take a half hour and watch it.  Mona Steen does a great job of showcasing many of the features and benefits of RPR for the agent.

There is no way to cover all of the details and we’ll be spending the next several weeks as an industry talking about RPR in one way, shape or form.  But I think it is safe to say that the RPR is by far the best user interface for real estate research on the market today, period.  It takes all of the lessons learned over the past decade from real estate websites (Trulia, Zillow, Roost, Estately, etc.) and from web advances (AJAX controls, mashups, mapping, etc.) and concentrates all of it into a single package of goodness.  RPR has few genuine innovations, but it presents old ideas in well-designed, clean, and extremely usable ways — and that is an innovation unto itself.

While I personally haven’t seen every single piece of MLS software in the market, nor have I seen every brokerage corporate intranet site, I think it’s safe to say that as of this writing, there isn’t anything even close to RPR in the market.

Brian Boero mentioned in a recent blogpost that Move is sitting on “$3.5 million worth of property search and display code that I guarantee you is bad-ass.”  Okay, I’ll reserve judgment.  But considering that Move’s product lost out to what Cyberhomes presented, let me say that I’m a little skeptical that even Move’s user interface is made of awesome the way RPR is today.

If RPR doesn’t win a Webby for design and user interface, someone at NAR forgot to submit it for consideration.  It’s that good.  (Psst — the deadline is Jan 29th, guys!)

The Search

I imagine that the demo was run off of internal development/staging boxes on gigabit ethernet, which means that search results are coming up much faster than would over public Internet.  So the speed of the search itself is something I will disregard.

The rest of the search is excellent.  First, searches can be done on virtually any geography: city, zip, neighborhood, a street, the entire state… “practically anything” to quote Mona.  Second, the search has multiple-layers of parameters — a brilliant little stroke of usability genius.  You can get as detailed as you’d like, or keep it high level, without having to wade through page after page of checkboxes.  And of course, you have the sidebar full of options for further narrowing or widening the search criteria.  Very nicely done.  Nothing particularly new here, but it is executed extremely well.

The property comparison tool is nothing new either, but again, it’s executed very well.  Clean columns, a simple chart of market conditions, basic property information — all the things that a professional might want to do a quick compare and contrast.  Noteworthy here is that you can compare properties that are not listings: they can simply be someone’s home, but as long as the data on that property is in the system, you can use it for comparison to your listings.  Nice.

As a matter of fact, the entire RPR is a property-centric database, rather than a listings-centric database.  As Mona shows later on in the demo, the system keeps all of the past data, including the most recent listings data (together with photos and even virtual tours) of homes that are not on the market.  Visually, the only difference between a Listing and a Property is that the latter lacks a List Price.  Otherwise, the record for a home is identical to the record for a listing, even to having the RVM value displayed next to it.  Yes, this is new; yes, this was the original stated purpose of what became RPR: a database of every single property in the United States.

The map-based search is extremely slick: custom boundaries, new centerpoints for radius search, and other tools.  In fact, I need a separate section to talk about the maps, so see more below.

Commentary & Annotation

RPR lets its users provide comments on a listing or on an “area” — a little unclear what this concept means.

These comments are either private or public, at the user’s option, which is a nice touch.  The user can simply utilize RPR as a “personal notebook” which was the intent (and the words Mona used to describe the functionality).

What is unclear is whether properties are searchable via these comments (at least public ones).  I would imagine not yet, but it would seem a fairly simple thing to bolt on something like a Google search box to do open textual keyword searches in the commentary.

The Data

According to the demo, the property data on a listing comes directly from the MLS, and will be updated frequently: every 15 minutes seems to be the shortest period, according to Mona.

Distressed property information — Notice of Default, Foreclosure activity, etc. — is fully available on any property that is under distress.

While Mona didn’t spend a lot of time on it, we know from previous releases and previous disclosures that pretty much the full panoply of data from LPS and other data providers will be aggregated by RPR.  Demographic information, school data, historical sales, mortgage information, etc.  I did learn that one data point that was included was flight path info, since the user can actually overlay flight path maps on top of the map search results to see if a house sits right below the approach to Newark Airport.

Suffice to say that if you can imagine it, and it has to do with real estate, chances are that RPR will have it.  In a brief demo, I saw parcel boundaries, historical sales, estimated values, market trends, MLS data, photos, virtual tours, housing density, open house information, mortgage information (present and historical), public filings, and distressed property info.  I’m sure there’s more.

More on the Maps

The property-level map view shows parcel boundaries and parcel information, presumably from LPS’s rich public records database.

The heatmaps are extraordinary in two ways: the richness of the underlying data, and the slickness of the implementation.  I’ve personally seen heat maps that are useful but so ugly as to be unforgivable crimes against design.  RPR’s heatmaps are gorgeous.  The population density heatmap looks fantastic.

While the demo didn’t go more into depth, the dropdown menu shows more options:

• Estimated Home Value
• 12-Month Change in Home Value
• Estimated Value Per Square Feet
• Buyers or Sellers Market

I would imagine that in the not too distant future, we’d see heatmaps for demographic data, such as Income, Age, Education, Children Under XX Age, etc.  You could overlay just about any geocoded data on the map — electric usage, gun ownership, whatever.

We’ve already heard that flight path data can be overlayed on top of map results.  Given the availability of things like Yelp API’s, enormous business listing databases, and the like… how likely is it that we will soon see RPR incorporate such data as overlays?  Coldwell Banker already offers amenities overlays (meaning stores, hospitals, etc.) — I’m confident that RPR will have that information at launch (or shortly thereafter).

Once that is done, RPR is heading towards becoming a bona fide site selection GIS tool, the likes of which have been available in commercial real estate for some time, but extremely uncommon in residential real estate.

Well, it sure does look as if overnight, 1.2m REALTORS are going to get their hands on a superb GIS system.  Wow.

The RVM (Realtors Valuation Model)

The heart and soul of the RPR business model is the RVM: augment the “best available AVM” with information from on-the-ground realtors.

Now, Mona says that no matter how good the RVM (or any AVM) is, the realtor on the ground with his local knowledge is the real source of insight.  This is true.  So, the RPR offers a wealth of tools for the realtor to add his knowledge to the RVM system to get a more accurate valuation.

Whether or not the RVM keeps input by realtors that modify the public record and the listings record for a particular property is an open (and interesting) question.  Based on some of the screens later on, it does appear that the RVM keeps the input at least for that particular user.  Again, whether that data gets incorporated into a more permanent RVM record or not is an open question.

In addition, full public data on mortgages on the property, sales history, financing history, etc. are available through the RPR.  The resulting  Sales and Financing Activity Chart is a beauty to behold.  The property that Mona used in the demo is underwater based on the data in the demo, although later in the demo, the RVM value is changed by modifying some information about the house, by the realtor selecting what he believes are the true comps, and by adding some additional information in that only he is privy to, such as recent home improvements.

Mona revealed that NAR had commissioned a study with Remodeling Magazine to get a correlation between home improvements done and any increase to the value.  That study was done regionally, but then RPR has localized it to the zip code level.  I imagine that RPR will soon refine the localization to the neighborhood or census block levels for even greater granularity.

Then RPR offers the realtor user the ability to make some subjective judgments on things like whether the market is hot or cold, whether the exterior and interior of the property are superior or inferior to comps, the quality of the view, how private the property is, etc.  It’s done using sliders, but despite that lack of specificity and granularity, it’s done extremely well.  With subjective judgments, it isn’t clear that getting more granular is even justifiable anyhow.

The graphing tools are well-done indeed.  Using full AJAX or perhaps javascript controls, the user can pretty much play with the data in a variety of ways.  The charts and graphs are clean, and there’s plenty of data on inventory, distressed properties in the area, etc. available.  As Mona puts it, “Huge amount of data. Huge amount of data.”

Reports

The single most astonishing thing I personally saw was the Reports that RPR generates.  I have a fair amount of personal experience creating reports for real estate professionals, both in commercial and residential.  Let me just say that the RPR team has some extraordinarily talented designers and UI people.

I worked on reports extremely similar to these while at Onboard, for example, so I have close personal knowledge of how much work creating these reports takes.  Let me tell you unequivocally that RPR’s reports absolutely bury the CoPilot reports I had worked on.  The same goes for the reports that I worked on while at Coldwell Banker Commercial, and had seen from our sister brands at Realogy.  And frankly, I was pretty proud of those reports — so the RPR’s Reports are simply astonishing.

Altos Research today makes really solid, well-designed, well-executed reports for the purpose of marketing and promoting its subscriber realtors.  I can say unequivocally that as nice as Altos’s reports are, RPR’s reports bury them.

Yes, these are mere opinions.  Your mileage may vary.  But I stand by them.

As Mona says in the demo, “They make the real estate agent look like a pro with the click of a mouse.  That’s all it takes.”  No question about it.

One of the major add-on’s to RPR will be a CRM hook-up, as these reports can be emailed directly to clients.  There is even a personal addressbook of sorts: “Email to My Contacts” with a drop-down.  I would imagine that the API’s already announced to allow users to display RPR data on their websites might include API’s that will let users hookup their CRM systems to RPR to do things like automated drip campaigns using these incredible reports.  (If y’all at RPR or at CRM companies hadn’t thought of that, you can send a check my way.  Inquire via email as to mailing address.)

Help & Tech Support

Finally, there is a wealth of help available.  Contextual pre-fab information, email support, online chat, and even telephone support are provided.  NAR does have an impressive helpdesk operation out of Chicago, and I imagine that RPR is able to leverage that infrastructure to provide what should be simply excellent tech support and customer support.

And of course, with one of the best social media managers in the RE.net working at RPR in the person of Reggie Nicolay, one can safely assume that any complaint tweeted about the RPR will likely get picked up and sent to someone to address.  Frank Eliason may have blazed that trail, and I see no reason to think that Reggie won’t copy what works for Comcast.

Conclusion: Iron Age, Meet Gunpowder

My overwhelming impression is that RPR, as a piece of web software, represents a tectonic shift.  It’s like the invention of gunpowder.

Warfare in the era before gunpowder was primarily an affair of the nobility who could afford to spend all their time training how to fight, and could afford the expensive armor, weapons, and horses.  Medieval war came down, in some respects, to how many heavy horse one could bring to the field of battle.  (The exception of the English and their longbows is just that: an exception.)  Professional soldiers practiced all the time on mastering the sword, the lance, the mace, and horsemanship.  Gunpowder changed all of that.

No longer did the mounted knight in heavy plate armor, who had spent his entire life learning to wear armor, learning to handle a warhorse, learning swordsmanship, how to use a lance, and so on enjoy any advantage over the peasant with a musket.  The leveling effect of gunpowder on war is difficult to overestimate.

RPR right now has the same feel of significance to me.  Maybe I’m overly dramatic, something I have been accused of from time to time.  We’ll spend the next few parts on the implications of this tool, but… this is a big deal for the industry.

Perhaps we’ll all learn more at Inman Connect, and there will be much more to discuss.  But for now, this is long enough, and all I wanted to do was to review RPR as best as I could from a demo.

Thanks for reading.

-rsh

7DS on Social Media

Thanks to everyone who came, and again, apologies for the audio cutting out.

-rsh

Sherry Chris at REBarCamp San Diego, 2009

In part 1, we explored the controversies and the issues surrounding what a Real Estate BarCamp should or should not be, and explored the rules and principles of the original tech-focused BarCamp.  At the end of that, I asked three questions:

• What goals are we trying to achieve with REBarCamps?
• Who benefits from REBarCamps?  Who should benefit from REBarCamps?
• What principles and rules help achieve the answers to the above questions?

The answers have been varied, and interesting, and I appreciate the dialogue, y’all.

The heart of the dilemma comes out in the responses as well.  Kathleen Buckley (@kvbuckley) writes:

# What goals are we trying to achieve with REBarCamps?
In my mind REBarCamps aim to help RE Professionals learn about and leverage a wide range of new, largely technology driven tools to enhance performance.

In contrast, Andy Kaufman (@andykaufman) writes:

# What goals are we trying to achieve with REBarCamps?
As organizers, I think we should strive to provide a friction-less setting where participants can meet face to face with their peers who are passionate about the space can interact. As a participant, I want to meet people, strengthen relationships, learn & share knowledge without ‘being sold’.

Is REBC about “helping RE professionals learn about technology”?  Or is it about peers meeting to share their passions?  Can it be both?  If so, how?

Thesis: Education of RE Professionals

The reality of REBC today is that it is largely a free educational seminar for realtors.  RE professionals often pay hundreds of dollars to attend conferences where they would be told the exact same thing they get at a REBC about using blogs, social networking tools, and other technologies to improve their business.  Professional coaches charge thousands of dollars to provide largely the same advice that people at REBC give away at no charge.

REBarCamp Virginia

From the attendee’s perspective, then, REBC represents an incredible bonanza.  Not only does the realtor get free advice and education, she is often fed for free by the organizers too who raise sponsorship dollars to do such a thing.  But from the perspective of those who “teach” and lead such sessions, what is the value?

There is no monetary value, since no one is ever compensated for teaching a session at a REBC, no matter how much it looks, sounds, and functions like a Continuing Ed class.  There may be personal satisfaction for some people, who simply enjoy sharing knowledge.  For others, there may be downstream benefits of being branded as an expert in a particular area as that leads to consulting gigs, job offers, and the like.  Still for others, they may see social benefits from being seen as one of the “cool kids”.  But without some value, psychic, social or economic, there is no reason to think that anyone would spend the time and energy teaching other people for free.

Now would be a good time to pause to point out something obvious, and yet not discussed fully.

REBarCamp is NOT a charity; it is not concerned with providing a “social good”.  We’re not coming together to figure out ways to feed starving children, or to work on eliminating homelessness.  Every single person who attends a REBC is doing so for a commercial purpose: improving his or her business in order to make more money.  A few attend for a purely social purpose, to hang out with their online friends, but even they’re not getting together to try and make this world a better place.

The anti-commercial streak that REBC has inherited from the original tech scene that spawned not only BarCamp but the Open Source and Creative Commons is entirely inappropriate in the context of real estate industry. None of us are trying to create some new piece of technology or knowledge for the benefit of the global community.  We are not artistes, but businesspeople.  This fact sometimes gets lost in the shuffle.

From an organizer’s perspective then, just as one has to work hard to provide the education to the attendees, one has to think about what the benefit to the presenters/teachers is. Personally speaking, I will not incur the costs of attending a REBarCamp (flight, hotel, time, etc.) for the sake of teaching others for free.  Sorry, that simply does not compute.

Antithesis: Gathering of Peers

@gingerw, @ines, and @nik_nik at REBCSF 2009

On the other end of the spectrum is the idea that REBC is a gathering of like-minded peers, all of whom have something to offer to each other.  This is far more in tune with the original “collaboration” intent of BarCamp.

This was how the first REBC was — all of us there were at least bloggers.  We didn’t necessarily know what the right or wrong way of blogging was; but we had been writing a blog for some time.  To meet with other bloggers and talk about what each of us had done, share ideas (like Twitter, which I had heard about first at that first REBC), talk about challenges (like dealing with negative comments), and so on was truly refreshing and engaging.  Each of us brought something to the table; some where better at design, others better at technology, and still others better at writing.  All of the ‘peers’ hunger for something like that experience.

A certain amount of anti-commercialism can be expected here, since no one actually needs to be taught anything to learn it, and everyone is equally willing and able to give and to receive.  An unspoken assumption is that if one of the ‘peers’ really wanted to know more about coding CSS, she can pick up a book and learn it.  All of us are technophile enough and open to experimentation enough to not need structured instruction.

The value in these collaborative sessions is largely self-referential.  I might be working on a particular angle in blogging; someone else might have a suggestion or criticism that helps me improve my blog.  Another person might bring up an issue that I hadn’t thought about, forcing me to come up with an answer which helps me down the road and possibly clients of mine (given my profession).

A true collaborative collective looks askance at freeloaders — people who come and suck up knowledge and information, but give none in return, whether out of a lack of skill, lack of knowledge, or lack of desire.  Experienced realtors rarely care to have brand new licensees come and ask them hundreds of questions; it’s no different in the RE.net.

Synthesis: Gathering of Peers to Teach and Learn

The synthesis between Education and Collaboration, then, begins with understanding the different values being offered.  If you are one of the ‘peers’, there is value in collaboration on a sticky problem or two — but you have to be willing and able to give as well as receive.

For the peers interested in collaboration, then, they must come to accept that no one owes them vibrant conversation.  They have to proactively create such opportunities.  It is unacceptable for people who know better to sit around hoping that the REBC organizers put together a high-level session for their interests.  They can just as easily put a topic on the board and seek opinions and input from the other peers who gather to help.

A session at an unknown REBC, 2009

A session topic like, “Problems with Incorporating Posterous Feeds” can easily draw those who may have experience in doing that, and the ad-hoc group can collaborate with each other and with you to come up with solutions.  But it’s on you to post that topic and seek that conversation.  Blaming organizers for failing to anticipate the interests and needs of the peers is just rank silliness.

At the same time, the organizers want to help the RE professional who wants to learn about new tools, techniques, best practices, and the like from those who have gone ahead, experimented, made mistakes, and learned.  An understanding must be reached here on the part of these “student-attendees”: no one owes you a free education, especially on subjects intended to help you make more money.  If someone is kind enough to spend time and energy doing it, then he or she is looking to get some sort of value out of that — whether future business opportunities, personal satisfaction, or social status.  If the lesson sucked, and you got nothing out of it, well, your opinion — while interesting — is irrelevant. By all means, vote with your feet and leave uninteresting sessions, but understand that you are not paying customers whose demands must be met by service providers.

The organizers and the ‘teachers’ must also come to an understanding about these educational sessions.  The organizers have to recognize that these sessions are not your collaborative sessions, that they may need to be scheduled ahead of time, with appropriate teachers who may want to use such sessions for their own benefit.  Considering the immense benefit that the students are getting — free education on someone else’s time and someone else’s dime — taking an overly hostile attitude towards commercial messages is, I think, inappropriate.

Principles of REBarCamp

Based on the above, we can think about what the general principles of REBC ought to be.  I’ll put forth five principles as candidates for the community to consider.  They are what I consider to be suited to advance the goals of Education and Collaboration, with an eye towards benefiting all participants to a REBC.

1.  No One Owes You Anything

Code of Hammurabi, Fragment

Whether you are a ’student-attendee’ who doesn’t know squat and is eager to learn, or a guru only interested in working with other gurus, we all should recognize that no one owes us a damn thing.  You will get out of REBarCamp what you put into it.  If you’re a newbie, then you need to go listen, observe, and learn — ask questions if you have them, take notes if you don’t.  If you’re an experienced REBarCamper and a member of the cognoscenti, then you need to take some responsibility for organizing the conversations you want to hear.

Put up sessions where you present your blog and get feedback; put up sessions to solve a tricky technical problem you have (as long as you’re prepared with an outline and a description of the problem).  Do something, but don’t just sit there and complain that the organizers didn’t provide enough ‘advanced’ sessions or some such nonsense.  No one owes you a damn thing.

2.  Know Yourself, But Respect Everyone

Part of the challenge is knowing when you are sitting with your peers in collaborative and open conversation, when you’re the most expert in the room and can educate others, and when you’re learning from someone who knows more than you do.  Because REBarCamp attempts to bridge the two goals of Education and Conversation, resentment of “elitism” or some such is inappropriate.  It isn’t elitist to want to talk with others who have something to offer to an issue you might be working on.

At the same time, part of what makes REBC special is the community that forms between the “experts” and the “newbies” — the social element of REBC is important as well.  Attendees should be encouraged to mingle, to socialize, to get to know each other as people no matter what their respective level of knowledge or expertise is.  It may not be elitist to want to collaborate with a select few, but it is damned elitist to look down on someone because he doesn’t know the latest and greatest techniques for SEO.

3.  Collaborate With Your Peers

Whatever your level of knowledge, collaborate with your peers.  Just because you can’t build a website in 48 hours doesn’t mean you don’t know the basics of blogging; just because a group is in the corner going through CSS code doesn’t mean you can’t interact with people who are at your level of knowledge and competence.  Just because you don’t know the first thing about technology does not mean you’re not an expert on doing real estate transactions.

Pipe up! Opine away, ask questions, criticize — whatever it takes to engage and cooperate.

4.  Appreciate Those Who Give

If you are in a session where the purpose is to educate, have some appreciation for the person sharing their knowledge and expertise.  Chances are, they’re giving of themselves on their own dime and on their own time.  Maybe they want to tell you a little bit about their company’s products or services — refrain from wrinkling your nose at them.  Recognize that we’re all there for business, not to save the world, and get off your high horse.

If someone brings a problem to be discussed by the group, appreciate their courage in bringing it forward.  It isn’t easy to stand up and ask for help, to seek collaboration, to get opinions from other people.  Help them if you can, offer opinions if you have them, but above all, appreciate them for adding to the REBC experience.

5.  Respect for the Person, Not What They Say

Whether it’s Education or Collaboration, have respect for the person… but not for what they’re saying.  Even if the organizers hand-picked someone to teach a class on a topic, that doesn’t mean you owe them any deference.  Appreciation for their sharing and for their initiative does not mean you have to sit still and listen to a bunch of nonsense.

Vote with your feet and leave a session if it isn’t for you; or just challenge the hell out of what he’s spouting.  That too is collaboration — preventing everyone else from being misled is a positive thing.  Or learning that your own views were in fact wrong helps you get more out of a REBC.

Important Corollary:

A strong corollary principle is: Your House, Your Rules.  It is difficult work organizing an event that tries to synthesize all of the competing demands and values.  The people who are putting on a REBarCamp deserve the community’s support and understanding, even if not everything they are doing meets with your personal approval.  If you don’t like how someone has organized her REBarCamp, by all means, organize your own however you see fit.

What do you think?  I know… too wordy.  But that’s where collaboration comes in   Someone better than I at being concise can tailor whatever we come up with into few succinct words.

-rsh