Notorious R.O.B.

The Seattle-based brokerage John L. Scott has waded into social networking waters in a pretty significant way with JLSconnect — a brand new service based on Microsoft’s Live platform.  From the news release:

JLSconnect augments the previous “Property Tracker” service found on www.JohnLScott.com which provides the ability for individuals to log in and save “favorite” properties.  JLSconnect adds new social networking capabilities to the Property Tracker experience that makes it possible for people to easily share and exchange comments on interested properties with others.

“Live Services are building block cloud services from Microsoft that John L. Scott utilizes to enrich the consumer experience,” says Sam Chenaur, Microsoft Platform Strategy Advisor. “With those services, John L. Scott is now able to allow users to see when their friends and family are online, provide instant messaging services to share and view property information, see and map properties with Microsoft Virtual Earth, and offer a single sign-on experience to all of those capabilities.”

This could be interesting, but it has the feel of a dollar short and a day late.  If JLS had launched the service a couple of years ago (and conversations about doing this sort of social networking were happening inside Realogy as early as summer of 2007), it might have been different.  But today, there are a lot more questions as to how JLSconnect will work out.

My concern is that if JLSconnect does not deliver the results that JLS may be expecting, it will be seen as evidence that social networking and social media in real estate don’t work.

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1.  Thou shalt not spam thy friends.

2.  Thou shalt not be LinkedIn with coworkers, for LinkedIn has replaced most job sites for recruiting. Social network with thy coworkers around the large container that dispenseth water.

3.  Thou shalt think twice before being Facebook Friends with coworkers, clients, and prospects. And definitely think thrice before posting photos and videos of thee in that club in Cancun with the beer bong.

4.  Thou shalt not network under a corporate name, for silly rabbit, social networks are for humans!

5.  Thou shalt be thyself as much as possible on social networks, for if thou art false, it shall be evident, and thy friends shall un-friend thee with the quickness.

6.  Thou shalt help thy friends in appropriate networks meet and help each other as much as possible, for that is the whole point of doing social networks at all.

7.  Thou shalt unsubscribe from any social network that thou hast not updated in the past thirty days, for thy time is not unlimited.

8.  Thou shalt refrain from ad hominem attacks in debates that inevitably arise in any social networks worth a damn, unless thou truly means to simply trash and flame another person.

9.  Thou shalt venture outside thy circle from time to time, for a social network that ceases to grow might be one that is headed unto death.

10.  Thou shalt have fun on thy social networks, for all work and no play makes Jack a psychotic murderer who freezes unto death.

-rsh