How to Web 2.0 your company?

8/2/07

 

What is Web 2.0?

 

Having a conversation with your clients

 

Web 2.0 Categories

Blogging

Social networking

Active Rain

The Future

Multi-media

 

Q:  Whatever happened to Podcasts?

Joel: Being eclipsed by video.  Audio podcasts are morphing into video podcasting. 

 

Q:  How old is Web 2.0?

MySpace and YouTube

MySpace is nothing more than a giant sex-crazed blog

Advent of Web 2.0 occurred AFTER a complete change of consciousness.  After 9/11, the whole country shut down.

 

Q:  How to Web 2.0 your company?  How to demonstrate to agents the importance of Web 2.0 and sustain their involvement?

 

Domus does exactly that kind of assignment.  We work with them on two challenges:

 

1.  To blog enable their web sites

 

2.  If you are a broker owner, how to motivate agents to write one article per week in a group blog

 

Within four months of writing Transparent Real Estate and Future of Real Estate, we had more traffic than some web sites here in CA.

 

Motivate with fear of loss?

 

When someone searches for real estate related key words, blogs deliver traffic.  Once you are the top page or top 10 pages on Google, you are there for life!  If you don't have an online presence, you'll have to pay $10 per lead to get a paid ad on the top Google search page.

 

How important is the internet to their business?  That should motivate them.

 

Q:  Disconnect between the way the web works right now, and culture of FREE on the internet?

 

The new broker website is NOT Web 2.0.  HomeGain is Web 1.0, because it sticks itself between the agent and the consumer.

 

Web 2.0 IDX sites do not exist yet?  If they did, when you do a search, a page would pop-up and invite you to go to an agent's website to see an agent's blog about a specific web site.

 

Q:  Legal aspects of allowing anyone to post to your web site?

 

Domus:  First way to clear legal hurdles is to create a site at an arm's length to the broker.

 

Second, create a terms of use so you minimize potential legal issues.

 

Joel recommends WordPress, and it's FREE.  Hosted version is more complex.

 

Web 1.0 companies are making money, but Web 2.0 companies have yet to prove their profitability even if they are sexy!

 

HouseValues is firing a bunch of people this week because the Lead Generation business model is not working.

 

Web 1.0 companies need to adopt some of the Web 2.0 functionality into their own sites.

 

 

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MY QUESTION:

 

Trying to keep up with social media tools and toys is now like training for a decatholon:

 

Blog

Post on other people's blog

Post on newspaper blogs

Video

Audio

Facebook

LinkedIn

MySpace

 

Contribute to my site

Trulia Voices

Zillow

 

 

Q:  Has anyone created the following two dream tools:

:

Content syndication to the social networks you choose to participate in

ROI:  Return on time invested in creating content

 

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Joel:  No one has invented a personal content syndication manager, but if there are any developers in the room, sounds like a great tool.

 

Pat: Blogs have reached a tipping point, but social media has not yet.

 

Join the largest social networks.  Facebook is one of the leaders, now considered the leading social networking going forward.  Facebook will replace the white pages.

 

No reason to be on any social network other than Facebook and LinkedIn.

 

Q:  The most interesting voices right now in real estate seem to be coming from outside the industry.

 

Q:  Monetizing your Web 2.0 company

 

AdNetworks, Google is actually a player... like media buying for television.  Online ad networks, Google -- Vertical ad networks for real estate.  Not hard to put together a vertical ad network.

 

Go into a database, and select

 

vFlyers and Postlets are acting like ad networks.  These are steps in the right direction, but not the kind of ad network you are talking about.