Notorious R.O.B. – Conversations on Marketing, Technology, Real Estate

Image: Barack Obama, on Flickr

Starting a few years ago, I’ve been hearing a lot about how the Gen-Y or Millenials (people aged anywhere from 18 to 30 today) are going to change everything — but particularly in real estate.

A random sampling of opinions about how the Millenials will affect real estate, from a Google search I just ran, turned up these recent posts and articles:

MILLENNIALS – The New Face of Real Estate:

Text messaging, email, IPods, Facebook and being mobile as ever is a part of the new generation, the Millennial.  The Millennial are the young workers ranging in age between 21 to 29 years old.  They have the potential to create a lasting change in the real estate workplace because of the way they live, communicate and more importantly, the way they view their jobs.

80 Million Reasons to start changing your marketing….Millennials.

What do you think , will typical marketing work to attract someone that is buried in a laptop, ipod, FB, Twitter etc.. and values friendship more than work?

Hear Them Roar: Millennials make up almost a third of the U.S. population, and they will fundamentally change how you do business.

“Real estate agents may wonder why they should care about the Generation Y age group, ages 18 to 30,” Jessica Lautz, a senior research analyst at the National Association of Realtors, wrote on the organization’s website in 2008. “These unique home buyers are the youngest of the home buying segment and are the most likely to purchase a home in the next two years in comparison to any other age group.”

Sustainability, Urbanity, and You: How Millenials will Change the World (and Architecture)

Millennials grew up in suburbia; bland environments dependent on others for mobility. They are entering the adulthood seeking lifestyle: vitality, diversity, and community. But, Millennials are not the only ones who will be driving this sea change from suburban to high quality urban environments. Baby Boomers will soon be retiring by the boat load. Retirement communities in their current form resemble warehouses more than they do the most desirable of retirement “villages”—real communities where retirees can be independent and empowered, such as the Upper East Side and Key West.

And so on and so forth.  If you cared to, I’m sure you can find dozens, hundreds of other musings on the Millenials and how they force real estate professionals to be ever more online, ever more sensitive to these 80 million strong “Generation We” people who care more about walkability and lifestyle than large colonials on three acres, and so on.

The whole drive towards social media’s ascendancy in real estate was fueled in part by the insight — as is clear in the ActiveRain post above — that these Millenials are the FaceBook generation who are natives of the digital realm.

But a couple of recent articles make me wonder just how the Millenials will impact real estate; it may be rather different than what we imagine today.

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There is a viral YouTube video going around right now, a “parody/spoof” of Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” with Alicia Keys.  Here it is, in case you haven’t seen it:

I understand that the people behind the video, one Pantless Knights, were making a parody.  I hope to God that they’re ridiculing the people being held up as examples of successful entrepreneurs by the media.  The intro in the sidebar hints that may be the case:

This is a Pantless Knights tribute to our favorite entrepreneurs (who are all “new dorks”). It’s a spoof of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ “Empire State of Mind,” from the guys behind Grasshopper.com (thank you!). We made it because there’s a new type of dork that is cooler than ever. Look at tech entrepreneurs, hipsters, Computer Science Barbie – they’re all super popular new dorks! Don’t forget to rate, comment and subscribe!

Trouble is, even if Pantless Knights were ridiculing the hipsters and Computer Science Barbies who flock to the latest get-rich-quick schemes that make up so much of the “Web 2.0/social media” world, there are entirely too many slackoisies in that industry making fools of themselves and cheapening the word “entrepreneur”.

Let me rage properly at these fools.

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There is an interesting little dichotomy in the results of the survey that Inman ran recently, and published as a Special Report: “To Be A Broker: Charting a Course for Recovery“.  It’ll cost ya some money, unless you’re an Inman Premium subscriber, but I think Inman did a great job here in putting the information together.  If you care about the industry, brokerage models, and the like, you’re going to want to check out this report.  So go buy one, or subscribe.  (Disclosure: I am a columnist for Inman.com… so uh, if you subscribe and such, I think I benefit through that.  Plus, you can see my archives on Inman.com, which might be entertaining later.)

My first thought upon reading the Report was that the sample might be skewed — after all, presumably Inman contacted brokers in its database of subscriber or some such.  They have to be among the tech elites, these brokers, to be subscribers of Inman.  Then my second thought was, that real estate brokers, more than perhaps any other group of business owners in America, need a remedial class on business strategy.  My third thought was, hey, this might be a good blogpost!

Said blogpost follows.

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Last week, a couple of folks were speculating about my employment status.  Apparently, I had taken a job at MRIS as the Director of Marketing, and so on.  As flattered and grateful as I am that people take an interest in my ability to pay income taxes I thought it might be time to clarify things a bit.

As I’ve disclosed before, MRIS has been a client of 7DS Associates for some time now.  We have done and continue to work on a number of business projects for them.  One of the assignments I’ve taken on recently is to fill-in as an interim capacity while MRIS searches for a Chief Marketing Officer.  I asked that the mistake about my being the Director of Marketing for MRIS be corrected because MRIS was at that moment trying to recruit a Director of Marketing, and I didn’t want that person thinking that she had been rejected.

I didn’t talk about this because I don’t discuss client matters in public.  Confidentiality is one of our core values at 7DS Associates, along with Competence (we give it our best) and Loyalty (we don’t take on clients where conflict of interest may arise).  We don’t even disclose who our clients are unless (a) they give us permission, (b) they disclose the relationship first, or (c) other ethical considerations mandate that we disclose the relationship.

Something to keep in mind is that Notorious ROB is my personal blog, of my personal opinions.  In some cases, they reflect the position of 7DS Associates, but I simply do not speak for my clients on this blog.  In some cases, our clients agree with my take on things; in other cases, they disagree.  They will vote with their feet if things go too far astray from their own points of view, or if they think our views get in the way of whatever assignment we are working on.

Finally, our client work is between us and the client, and we keep those strictly confidential; only our clients can decide whether they like the work we do for them or not.

I hope that clears up any mystery.

-rsh

I got a couple of requests via email/DM for this so…

This is the rent-buy worksheet I used while writing my latest Inman column (subscription required).  I took it from Khan Academy and then modified it.  Feel free to point out errors, etc. right in the comments, and I’ll modify what I can.

Rent/Buy Analysis Worksheet (Right-click, and “Save Link As…”)

Enjoy!

-rsh

See that green pattern on the bark! That's 3.2(b)(iii) of the License!

Once again, I find myself in the curious position of praising the good folks at RPR while at the same time ending up on a negative note.  On the one hand, RPR’s posting their Content License Agreement (complete with redlined corrections) is by far the most transparent thing that I’ve seen a company do in real estate industry thus far.  Kudos not just to Reggie Nicolay, the Social Media director of RPR, but also to Marty Frame and to Dale Ross, the executives in charge of RPR.  These guys talk the talk, and walk the walk of being open and transparent.  Thank you guys, and I really mean that.

If you’d like to look at the entire Agreement, including the Terms of Use for the RPR Website, go to the Google Doc here.

Some of the critiques already on the web may be entirely valid, but I think they largely miss the point.  For example, Mike Wurzer’s post suggesting that the new License Agreement allows RPR to sell listing-level data to various customers may be accurate (or may not be, as Marty Frame points out in the comments), but… this falls into the category of missing the forest because you’re too busy looking at whether the tree is a douglas fir or a pine tree.

There are three major, fundamental issues that the License Agreement does not address — primarily because those issues stem from RPR’s business model and its basic value proposition.  If the goal is to nitpick the language of the Agreement in the hopes of finding a provision on which one can base a future lawsuit, I suppose the detailed analysis being done now is interesting.  If the goal, however, is to understand the fundamental challenge of RPR, then we need to raise our eyes up a bit.

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image: Polly Jordan, realestatecafe.com

Once in a while, realestistas get around to discussing tame, non-controversial topics.  And as any regular reader of this blog knows, I am simply allergic to controversy and disagreement.  I am glad, therefore, that people are talking over at Agent Genius about the entirely boring and controversy-free topic of dual agency.

As it happens, I happen to have a view or two about dual agency, and figured I’d meditate on a few unrelated (or maybe related) topics as follows.  Most of them are inspired by the comments to the AG post:

1. Dual Agency and #RTB
2. Dual Agency and Brokerage
3. What Dual Agency Says About Agent Value

Twitter version: Dual Agency is a symptom of so much that is wrong with real estate today.  Long version follows after the jump.

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This is a quick note.

I found something recently that bears directly on my post on Employer Liability for Employee Social Media, and I’m somewhat hopeful that we’ll see more clarity on this topic.

Michael Yon is an independent journalist who reports from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of the world where the U.S. military (and its allies) are fighting.  I happen to love his work, and believe it points to the future of journalism, but that’s a different story.

He recently posted a report on Facebook about two soldiers who were killed by Taliban attacks.  That in and of itself is not unusual. He does this all the time, doing the job that the national media rarely does.

What is unusual is that in the comments to this report on Facebook, a Mike Garcia attacked Yon for releasing the names of the soldiers before the DoD got around to it.  Scroll down in Michael’s fan page to find this thread, as I couldn’t find a way to link directly to his post and to the comments.

Turns out that Yon had followed all guidelines, directives, and had cleared the release with Army commanders on the ground in Afghanistan.  What followed is where things get interesting for us.

We see that Mike Garcia says that the FB comment is is personal opinion, that he is not representing the US Army or speak in any official capacity, even though he is a Public Affairs Officer.

Michael Yon is having none of it.  He believes that the fact that Mike Garcia is a Public Affairs Officer of the US Army means that he represents the Army even on a Facebook comment.  Which means that Yon believes he can now sue the Army for defamation and libel.

Now while it’s highly unlikely that Yon would actually sue the Army for defamation, I sorta hope he would so we’d get a case directly on point as to when the employer is and is not responsible for the social media actions of an employee, and what the relevant factors might be.  In this case, Major Garcia is a Public Affairs Officer — something close to a PR person — and posting on Facebook is likely in the sphere of his employment.  Respondeat superior ought to follow.

But at a minimum, we might see the Army promulgate specific directives clarifying when a soldier (an employee of the Army) is and is not speaking for the Army when engaging in social media.  That would be helpful for additional clarity.

-rsh

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.

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