We do this to better advise our clients on what’s out there and to prepare ourselves to respond to those innovative clouds building on the horizon

This was the result of this year’s effort:

There’s a lot of meaty stuff on that whiteboard. Much of which we hope to feature on our blog or in our 1000watt Spotlight email newsletter (have you signed up yet?).

One of the more exciting trends we’re keeping an eye on closely these days is immersive environments.

Consider this app:

Tour Wrist resuscitates the 360 virtual tour, a play not new to real estate but one that’s long been on life support. Rather than spinning an image around using your mouse, Tour Wrist makes use of your device’s internal compass and gyroscope. As you move your iPhone or iPad around in real space you mimic the view of the panorama on your screen.

It feels a little goofy doing it, but the effect (especially on the iPad’s larger screen) is transfixing. You really feel like you’re peering through the ether into another place.

It’s no wonder it walked off with the 2012 Best of Show award at last week’s Macworld | iWorld conference in San Francisco.

Swivel is another exciting development. The app uses Microsoft’s Kinect technology to create a virtual dressing room where you can try on virtual representations of real world goods.

The demo is pretty impressive stuff.

Clearly there are some cues here for real estate. Getting a real sense for a particular property has been always been elusive online. We’ve layered photos on maps to provide them with some degree of geographic context. Smartphone cameras and photography apps like Instagram have given us a peek into a what makes a neighborhood or property truly special. And video may finally be making a dent in Realtor marketing budgets this year.

But nevertheless, we have yet to truly get inside a home virtually. To explore it untethered.

The notion that we’ll be able to transport ourselves virtually may seem like the stuff of science fiction today. Tomorrow, I’m not so sure.

I think we’re heading in that direction.

Trulia launched Trulia Insight, a product that delivers behavioral data on leads to agents. It’s an add-on to their main Trulia Pro subscription ad product.

This sort of lead scoring is not new (Point2 released a similar product years ago, and many IDX solutions offer a window into user actions), but the execution is excellent here and the product is national from day one.

Anyway, a few observations:

• If I were a broker, I’d be on the phone now asking my tech vendor why I didn’t have this in 2002.

• This is just the tip of the iceberg. Trulia is mining its own data here, but imagine when user behavior on other sites (yes, that’s trackable), Facebook actions and other signals from the wider web are in the mix…

• Which leads to questions of privacy, a big issue that has yet to generate significant heat within real estate. The folks over at Buyfolio have something to say about that.

…

Move, Inc. launched the Real Estate Network (REN).

Bottom line:

Brokers can now choose to syndicate their listings to big franchise sites through ListHub. Or they can choose not to.

I think Greg’s take is right on, but don’t think REN alone is going to be a game changer.

The larger and still-evolving struggle to escape the IDX headlock without destroying its cooperative underpinnings will be, over time.

Stay tuned.

…

Facebook announced 60 new apps that integrate with its new Timeline layout. They record events in your life – from what you gave to charity to how far you jogged today.

Who will be in the mix first with the “Bought my home” play? What will be done with the resulting data?

Did I mention privacy and listings policy?

…

TheRedPin, a Toronto-based brokerage that launched in 2010 with a focus on the condo and new construction markets, released a full-on VOW.

Forget for a moment that they offer a buyer rebate, have agents on salary and even have a name pretty close to Redfin. Go to school on this VOW implementation. It’s the best I’ve seen.

…

A friend pointed me to TrunkClub this week. This company provides men with personal shopping at a distance. You submit a profile and your sizes and TrunkClub delivers a hand-selected “trunk” of clothing to your doorstep. You pay for what you keep and send back the rest. Shipping is free.

Services in this vein are sprouting up all over the place, and it makes me think both of Marc’s post describing the rise of consumer-to-consumer commerce and Joel’s write-up of Louis CK’s obliteration of the media value chain.

Are we headed, after 15 years, to a reality where consumers do their own deals and agents are reduced to something like a hotel concierge/notary hybrid? Will the slumbering beast of disintermediation finally rise?

I don’t know, of course. But the ground under the real estate business model as we have known it is feeling more unsettled to me right now than it has at any point in my 15 years around this industry.

We tend to work with brokerages – all of them quite “traditional” – that feel this too and are working to account for it. Their foresight secures their future. But most remain unattuned to this reality.

That’s scary.

…

Zillow released Neighborhood Advice, a Facebook integration that shows home shoppers which of their friends (if any) live within, or have checked-in around, the area in which they are searching. The idea being that those local connections can provide trusted advice.

It’s a good idea, and one I expect to see pop up on other sites soon.

…

I look at everything above and am struck by how it ties together. Listings policy, data, privacy, social commerce, challenges to incumbent business models… it’s a powerful mix of forces that will make 2012 a year to remember.

Thanks for reading!

[Disclosure: Move, Inc. is a 1000watt Consulting client]

In short, you hand over your fiver, get the video, and do as you please.

By all accounts the experiment has been a success. Louis grossed over $1 million dollars in little more than ten days. These were dollars that went directly into his pocket. No network or cable channel in the way. No middleman. And better yet, he retains the rights to the content in perpetuity.

I bought it. First, because the dude is funny. I mean seriously, eye-wateringly, doubled-over funny. And second, because I believe strongly in the distribution model he chose and I wanted to support it.

But what really grabbed me was the way he spoke to me on his website. There was…

No BS

Let’s take look at the copy.

If you decide to pull the trigger on the purchase you get this:

I’m really glad you pressed BUY THE THING! So here’s what’s going to happen now. You’re going to enter your email. Then you’re going to go to PayPal or Amazon to pay. After that, you’re going to be sent right back here where you can immediately watch the movie or download it.

Pretty straightforward, right? As you fill out the checkout details, you get prompted to sign up for CK’s email list:

I’m going to be offering other things through this site.

Would you like to hear about them?

•  Yes, I’d like to receive further emails about Louis C.K. things.
•  No, leave me alone forever, you fat idiot.

And by default, “No” is checked for you. This is a clear example of how you…

Respect your user 

Granted, this is copy from a guy best known for a riff on our selfish attitudes towards technology and the tone might not fly on every real estate website, but the lesson is still worth absorbing.

Too often when we look at real estate websites, we see a bewildering mess of terminology. Naming conventions be damned, and important actions on often are buried under a mountain of buzzwords, neologisms and misappropriated terms.

All of this causes confusion with the user.

When we first sit down with a client, we reinforce with them the need to be clear and direct. We peel back the layers of wallpapered marketing-speak and lay down a new coat of copy that communicates to the user in a way that makes sense to them.

It’s important to note here that this doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your brand’s voice. In fact, the more plainly you speak, the more strongly your brand begins to shine.

Funnily enough, this is a simple lesson taught by a comic. Be clear and call things what they are. Respect your users and they’ll pay you back in spades.

So if you’re looking at your website this year, bear in mind that what sounds good you, or what you feel you want to say, but not be what your user wants to hear.

And seriously, if you haven’t bought Louis’ video yet, go drop the five bucks. It’s well worth it.

Kaboom!

Shrapnel

According to William Gibson, the future is already here. It’s just unevenly distributed.

Gibson believes the future is ever present. It’s spread about in particle form waiting for someone to piece it together. Given the persistent inter-connectivity of people through the giant digital network called the Internet, this piecing together – the work of innovation – now occurs very, very fast.

The shrapnel of progress has obliterated things we believed to be fixed objects. Music. News. Commerce. Services. A century of analog music recorded on tape and sold on vinyl has disappeared into the ether in less than a generation.

We will find no resting place.

This condition is both frightening and beautiful, like a George Romero movie.

Change is terrifying. But you can’t prevent it. So embrace it.

Everything is ripe for…

Displacement

If you sold real estate between 1945 and 1995, your biggest challenges were mastering call waiting, learning how to shove a sheet of paper into a fax machine and leaving a message on voice mail.

Slow, turtle-like change.

Fast-forward 15 years. The social web. Pocket computing. Apps. Ambient connectivity.

Mind boggling stuff.

If you grok William Gibson, you ride these tides. If not, you kick against them, exhausting your energy fighting the inevitable.

There are a riders and fighters in real estate. The fighters still can’t nail a decent Website. Or market themselves effectively in a post-print world. They are drawn to every shiny new piece of cyber garbage. And they revile the riders.

This leads them to…

The eve of destruction

Lets place the puzzle pieces on the table.

Etsy, Taskrabbit, AirBnB, GetAround and Parkatmyhouse are among a raft of new companies upsetting the traditional car rental, vacation rental and flea markets. They connect strangers with strangers and make them comfortable doing business with each other.

Square and BankSimple are lobbing grenades at traditional banking.

Pirq delivers Seattle residents instantly redeemable retail discounts based on their location, effectively torpedoing the direct mail brochure and coupon book in the process.

Zuuvu, Klout and Kred are just the tips of a cultural and commercial iceberg that will make transactions between strangers more reliable.

StreetAdvisor, Nabewise and Everyblock are turning citizens into neighborhood reporters.

Peers communicating directly with peers. No bullshit.

2020 is eight years away. Is it so far-fetched to think that in eight years this tide will rise upon real estate’s shores?

If you believe the consumer will need the 1995 version of real estate brokerage in 2020, forget the Mayan Calendar… by that point your world will have ended.

The dawn of the future 

We believe there will always be a place for real estate professionals, and for the brands and brokers that support their work. But there will be fewer of them. Those that will be rocking in 2020 are piecing together the future right now.

The glimpses of tomorrow – all that crazy stuff I mentioned above – can be platforms you build or leverage. The zombies plodding outside your cabin door need not be terrifying if you walk out to great them. Look at those around you who fight against change, and increase their distance form your working life.

And keep in mind that the future can be more than something that happens to you. It can be something you build.

[Disclosure: StreetAdvisor is a 1000watt Consulting client]

So this is going to be on the short and kinda fuzzy side.

…

Amazon has purchased the domain casa.com.

Remember, this time, when they come for the listings, hide them under the bed!

…

Speaking of listings, the whispers about various plans to “build an industry-controlled Zillow/Trulia killer” are building.

When I hear these, I think:

• Isn’t that Realtor.com?

• Wouldn’t it just be easier and cheaper to stop giving them your listings or require rules for their display you are more comfortable with? I mean, that’s not easy, but still…

• Yes, he did do a great job running IT for FAR back in the ‘90’s, but do you really think he’s got what it takes to take down Zillow? 

• So the idea is to address concerns about third-party websites taking share from your company website by creating another third-party website?

It’s going to be an eventful year.

…

I need to understand Facebook for work, and think it can be very valuable for brand purposes, but I do not like it personally. The introduction of Timeline to the already Byzantine interface took things to a level that approaches casino-like cynicism.

A casino is an environment carefully designed to produce in its guests a state of bewilderment that detaches them from the reality and consequences of their activity.

That’s what I’m feeling in Facebook these days.

In real estate, where public, private, personal and professional swirl together, it pays to be very, very careful.

…

A mobile app called Menu and Hours is in development as an alternative to the review and photo-choked food app space.

I makes me think we should build a real estate search app called Price and Photos.

I’m serious.

…

This story about a cabbie that rocks Twitter for his business is worth reading. The takeaway: Focus, stay on message, and give people something they want or need. Sounds simple, but it’s something I sometimes forget.

Have a great weekend. I hope to see many of you at Inman next week!

[Disclosure: Move, Inc., which operates Realtor.com, is a 1000watt Consulting client]

These are things that real estate typically outsources to outside experts, and everyone seems OK with that.

Yet along the way up the bar, most choose to manage the marketing and packaging of their brand themselves – an odd contradiction, if you ask me.

A real estate Brazilian

Brand campaigns aren’t cookies you bake at home. Or a pot of goulash into which you throw pinches of this and that. It’s the singularity you weave into everything you do to stand out.

Technology has gifted us with many implements with which to work at this. They empower the user, but can also falsely lure them into believing they are “building a brand” when in reality they are simply making a mess.

You risk sliding down the bar you wish to climb. You’ll gravitate to that which is convenient, or free. You’ll write words that you would never speak to people.

Perhaps you will fail to realize that the stock image of a handsome couple you chose to portray buyers on your collateral may also be the erectile dysfunction models found on a pamphlet at RiteAid’s prescription counter.

Technology has been generous. But it can’t provide strategy – and the discipline required to wax your real estate brand to a perfect Brazilian.

Great brands don’t skim edges. They meticulously groom their campaigns to evoke desire within people who want their product or service. And when that personal connection occurs, when what you do matches how you appear, you create something timeless: A brand.

When you fail you become just another nameless, faceless agent. Or brokerage. Someone or something that just sells real estate. 

Climbing

Maybe you have gone the distance. Honed your brand to perfection. Raised your personal bar. You’re ready to rock in 2012.

Why risk the final, grand reveal of who you are through a do-it-yourself, arts and crafts marketing campaign? Leaving your brand obscured beneath a tangle of shoddy marketing and expecting, hoping, praying, that people will search for it is too grand an expectation.

You don’t cut your own hair. You don’t build your own cars. You don’t cobble your own boots or manufacture your clothing – the things with which you adorn yourself to create the picture of who you are to the world. You seek professionals to help you look great.

So find seasoned marketers.

Let them do their job.

So you can spend more of your time climbing.

Thank you for reading, for commenting and for being part of the community that supports us. It means a lot.

If you are on our 1000Watt Spotlight mailing list you got this last week. As a very small gesture of our gratitude, we’ve packaged up some of our favorite issues of 1000watt Spotlight. Perhaps you’ll find something you missed; or, if you like, share it with an industry friend.

If you’d like to make sure you get every issue of Spotlight in 2012, head on over and sign up!

Thanks

Marc, Brian and Joel

Dear readers:

Today at five o’clock, the 1000watt office will dim its lights, begin to settle into the warm glow of our Hanukkah candles, yule logs and Christmas tree lights, and surround ourselves with our beautiful wives and amazing children. Ahhh!

The holiday is nigh.

2011 was a great year for us all. You have risen to face your challenges and you are the better for it. As a result, so is the real estate industry.

Personally, I’ve seen a lot since I started in this business. In 1997, I started a small content syndicate to curate a real estate column and distribute it to the Web and newspapers.

In 1998, I received a phone call from Brad Inman. He introduced himself as the publisher of an online news service, Inman News. I had never heard of him. Or the company. Little did I know how massively influential he was. Or how much that call would change my life when he introduced me to his right-hand man at Inman, Brian Boero.

I accepted Brian’s invitation to fly up to Oakland. We talked about working together. I was intrigued but he and I were worlds apart. I was an impractical, wishful, brash New Yorker, with a hippie vibe and willing to risk everything to bring a cool idea to life. He was the logical, sagacious, cultured Northern Californian, replete with class, etiquette and a fastidious dedication to Swiss-like precision.

However, what we discovered in that meeting was a thread of commonality between us that would begin to bind us together in a cosmic way.  We both believed the real estate industry was great. And we both desired to make it greater.

I left Inman in 2001 to help build a software company. Brian joined me in 2004 to run it. Then, in 2007, we started 1000watt. It was a hair-brained idea built on a tiny investment in a WordPress blog. It gave us a platform to engage with anyone willing to take on two guys with a pint of talent and twenty pounds of heart between them.

In 2009, Joel Burslem joined us. It was a celebratory day. We had been big fans of his Future of Real Estate Marketing Blog. He’s yet another type. Canadian. Temperate. Laid back like a Hawaiian sunset. He’s wicked smart. Meticulous. And can make anything from Apple sound like it came directly from God.

Like us, he came from Inman News which had cultured his big heart and nurtured his own desire to make the real estate industry better.

Fast forward

Over the last 4 years, I am proud of the small part the three of us have played in making this dream possible – along with all our readers and the bloggers, agents, brokers, news makers and vendors who have gone on to amplify this rally cry.

More importantly, over the last four years, we’ve been lucky to work with many great companies. We’ve helped them build and strengthen their brands and better communicate who they are, what they do and why they do it. We’ve helped them crush their competitors by shooting beautiful videos, executing amazing marketing and advertising campaigns and designing and building kick-ass apps and websites.

These people are our clients, but more importantly they are our friends, and fill our lives with passion and joy daily. They’ve given us purpose. They are, in a very big way, making our dream come to life.

2012

We have big plans. We are going to launch a new website and a revamp to the 1000watt blog. We’re going to continue to zig while others zag.

We are also going to release our first web app – long awaited, I know – called Report It. It’s taken more time than we planned, but we made the decision not release to it until we are thrilled with how it works. We’d rather nail it on our dime than on yours.

We are going to continue blogging about the industry. Challenging the status quo and reporting on the events that matter.

We are also going to continue to speak publicly at events and conferences around the world. And share the future we envision, the one that isn’t here yet but could be soon.

Most importantly, we are going to continue to be your cheerleaders. And root for your success in every way we can.

So, from the three of us, along with Soo, Chris, Jon, Mario, Eddie, Marco, Jessica, Stefanie, Brett, Ryan and Michael (and everyone else who works behind the scenes at 1000watt) we thank you for your readership, your attention and your business. We wish you the very best holiday season.

- Davison

It’s pretty simple, really. Agents can check-in to properties, receive push notifications for new leads from Trulia, organize contacts and search for property.

It’s a good idea. Agents are Trulia’s customers, after all, so why wouldn’t they want to engage them in this way?

But what is most interesting here is that agents earn badges and points – those potent bits of ego-tickling ephemera – for doing things within the app. Trulia then creates a “Leaderboard” ranking agents by these accumulations.

This is going to be an interesting experiment in “gamification” within real estate.

Turning apps into games where users earn points, badges, rewards and recognition as they check-in, level up, or connect with others has been engagement catnip for apps like Foursquare, Get Glue, Scvngr and others. It’s also been over-hyped and applied in ways that are pretty silly.

But I think game mechanics can be potent in real estate. ActiveRain was early on this, offering points for activity within the network. They grew like a weed. But there hasn’t been a large-scale play in this vein since.

Picture the festive army of Realtors at the NAR show wearing ribbons, badges, blinking lights and other tokens of status. Consider the affinity for designations and their display that marks our industry, or the competitive drive that makes a real estate office buzz.

Now look at the visuals for the Trulia app below. Points. Badges. Faces of other agents staring back at the user. It’s a brilliant taunt.

Now politically… this could be a little touchy. Because agents are the customers of someone else: their broker. And brokers provide the listings that make Trulia possible. To the extent that brokers perceive this as diminishing their gravitational pull over agents, it’s going to raise some hackles.

But hackles or no hackles, we should keep an eye on how this plays out.

Here are the screen caps:

Ebby Halliday, the iconic Dallas brokerage, adopted Google Apps. We’ve seen a number of brokers make this move and it always seems to bring with it a powerful epiphany: the words “Someone call <IT guy name> and tell him to reboot the server” will cease to echo through company offices.

…

Real estate companies have spent gazillions on SEO over the past few years. It’s understandable given Google’s power to make or break a site’s visibility. But content, the stuff that actually fills a website and makes it useful, has often been swept under the rug. I’m not talking about listings – everyone has those – but the basic decision support stuff consumers need to navigate a transaction. SEO mania has prevailed.

Check out this video from Google’s Matt Cutts with this in mind:

…

Check out this list of stats from AdAge. How we sell real estate – and who we sell it to – is going to change in dramatic ways very soon. The cross-cultural, cross-platform Realtor will win the day.

…

Flipboard, the company that brought magical magazine-style reading to the iPad, released an iPhone app this week. A million people have downloaded it in just a few days. If you haven’t done it yet, you should. Real estate search and discovery will look and feel this way soon. Count on it.

…

PlaceIQ, a location data company, raised a bunch of money this week. I note this because what this company is doing is pretty mind blowing. They’ve divided major metros into 100 meter blocks, for which they absorb mounds of data and media to formulate a likely profile of the person or people in those places. Then they layer in real-time (and anonomous) user data gleaned from mobile devices.

The result: Your ad for an upscale condo development, real estate brokerage services, or mortgage products will get to the right type of person in the right type of place, at exactly the right time.

That’s one fancy door hanger.

Have a great weekend!