Archive for October, 2008

Gary Vaynerchuk at Connect NYC ‘09: “worth the price of admission”

Last week, I shared with you the thoughts of Stephen Jagger regarding Gary Vaynerchuk and his upcoming keynote presentation at Inman Connect NYC ‘09. I wanted to share with you the thoughts of Inman Premium Member Jay Thompson on that very same subject.

Jay recently wrote a post on his website, PhoenixRealEstateGuy.com, that shares his personal thoughts about Vaynerchuk’s recent keynote at the Web 2.0 Expo in NYC. The post includes video of Vaynerchuk’s presentation there. What does Jay think about the fact that Vaynerchuk will be a keynote speaker at Connect NYC ‘09?

"That alone is worth the price of admission."

I don’t think I could have said it any better myself. If you haven’t registered for Connect NYC ‘09 yet, what are you waiting for? Register today! If you are a blogger, ask me about our special "blogger pricing" promotion. You can send me an email, and I’ll give you all the details: Daniel.Rothamel@Inman.com

Originally by RealEstateZebra from Inman Blog on October 28, 2008, 1:13pm

I’m in charge here

Lenderama’s Todd Carpenter says that if he was the National Association of Realtor’s social media manager, there are about two dozen things he’d do, including "take a long hard look at NAR’s leadership (and determine) their willingness/competence to participate in social media and evaluate the possible strengths of each member."

Social media guru Dustin Luther says that if HE was NAR’s social media manager, he would "listen to the needs of NAR executives and execute on their ideas."

Luther has an insider’s perspective. The founder of Rain City Guide (he now blogs at 4realz.net), Luther resigned his position as director of consumer innovations at Move Inc. — which operates Realtor.com — in December, after serving in the post for a year.

Why does NAR need a social media manager? The group has blogs, podcasts and "several different things happening on Twitter," Realtor.org’s Hillary Marsh told Inman News this week.

Carpenter says he’s applied for the job.

Luther says, that "if I was in Todd’s shoes, I’d only give it passing interest until they added some real decision making authority and bumped up the title considerably."

Originally by Matt_Carter from Inman Blog on October 24, 2008, 4:30pm

Please edit your comment signatures

One of the features available to Inman.com users is the ability to have a personalized signature attached to all of your comments on the site. We enabled this feature so that folks could not only personalize their Inman.com experience, but also as a way of promoting their services to anyone who visits Inman.com.

I previously wrote a post outlining the guidelines we had in mind for comment signatures. Recently, we have discovered a need to make the guidelines more specific, so comment signature guidelines have been added to the Community Guldelines page. Please take a look at them.

Basically, what it boils down to is this: don’t put more than 2 links in your comment signature, and don’t link keywords, just URLs. If your keywords are part of your URL, more power to you.

We want to keep spam at bay, and we don’t want to make the links in comment signatures "no follow." If everyone could make sure that their comment signatures meet the guidelines, it would help quite a bit.

Also, if you see a comment that has a signature that violates the guidelines, just flag it. I’ll get it in my moderation queue, and I can send a friendly reminder to the user, reminding them of the guidelines, and asking them to comply.

I love reading all of the insightful comments from our users and members. The discussions that happen here at Inman.com are robust, lively, and interesting. I really want it to continue that way, just without the keyword links.

Thanks!

Originally by RealEstateZebra from Inman Blog on October 23, 2008, 11:41am

Folks are excited about Connect NYC ‘09– take a look!

One of the things I love about being the Community Manager here at Inman News is that I get to see first hand the creativity and overall "coolness" of our members. Just the other day, Stephen Jagger, who I met at Connect San Francisco, and who will be speaking again at Connect NYC ‘09, sent me a video he made as part of a blog post he wrote about Connect NYC ‘09.

Stephen is excited not only about being a speaker at Connect NYC this year, but also about seeing one of our Keynote speakers, Gary Vaynerchuk. Stephen has worked with Gary personally before, and he had some great things to say, so check it out:

Stephen is going to be at Connect NYC ‘09, and so will a whole bunch of other cool, interesting, intelligent, and insightful professionals. will You be there?

Originally by RealEstateZebra from Inman Blog on October 21, 2008, 12:29pm

The Path to Disaster

Inman News today released a late-breaking special report titled The Path to Disaster (PDF Download); which chronicles the demise of the housing market over the last few years.

From the report’s introduction:

We dug back in the Inman News archives for some forensic evidence that foretold the catastrophic demise of the boom days, for those clues — some subtle and some now painfully obvious — that this was all bound to happen.

The 10 articles presented here — originally published from 2003 to 2007 — offer discussions of ominous housing-bubble theories, the rise and the risks of subprime lending and unconventional mortgage products, skyrocketing home prices, overbuilding, the potential for a widespread credit crisis, and other contributors to the problems facing the housing and financial markets.

The lessons learned from the latest extreme run-up and burnout phases in the housing market will perhaps guide the industry and its regulators in efforts to reduce the fallout from future cycles.

Inman News Industry Special Reports are available FREE to Inman Members or as a one-time purchase of $79. Join now for instant access to our entire Special Reports library. Other recent reports include 100 Most Influential Real Estate Leaders.

Become an Inman News Premium Member today!

Originally by Inman_News from Inman Blog on October 17, 2008, 8:39am

Inman Connect NYC ‘09 delivers not one, but TWO fabulous keynote speakers

Earlier today, we were proud to announce that New York Times columnist and report Andrew Sorkin will be giving a keynote presentation at Connect NYC ‘09. Andrew will be shedding some light on a question that is, no doubt, on many of our minds, "Wall Street - Where We’ve Been and Where Are We Going?" You can read all about Andrew and his writings for the NY Times.

Andrew is the second of two fabulous keynote speakers at Connect NYC ‘09. The other is Gary Vaynerchuk. I came across a very interesting video post Gary made just a few days ago. It is particularly relevant to real estate and mortgage professionals, since Gary addresses branding, advertising, marketing, and the ROI of print vs. online. Take a look:

Andrew and Gary are sure to deliver keynote presentations that you won’t want to miss. So what are you waiting for. . .

Originally by RealEstateZebra from Inman Blog on October 16, 2008, 7:30pm

The Credit Crunch According to The Economist

Thumb through a series of covers from the Economist’s archives.

The Economist Covers - The Financial Crisis Evolution

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Originally by jburslem from Inman Blog on October 15, 2008, 2:27pm

Turn on. Tune in. Discover Video.

According to data released by Comscore, in July of this year, Americans watched over 11 billion videos and spent over 550 million hours watching online video. Those numbers are staggering. Television and the Internet are slowly but surely converging.

Video has always been a powerful marketing tool but one that, until now, has largely been inaccessible and expensive for most small business owners, including brokers and agents. But technology has changed that forever.

Here at Inman News we’ve watched this growth in video with keen interest and even dabbled in it a bit ourselves (see InmanTV).

We also think it’s time to have a deeper conversation about how the real estate industry can begin to adopt this new technology.

So that’s why in January, at our Real Estate Connect event in New York, we have decided to hold the inaugural Digital Video Summit. At this pre-Connect workshop, we plan to explore the issues around online video and discover ways brokers and agents can leverage this new wave of innovation to better market listings on the web, find new buyers and discover new ways to engage online audiences.

This half-day workshop will bring together some of the brightest minds in web video and highlight some of the industry-leading best practices that to give you tangible real-world ways you can integrate video into your business.

So if you’re curious about the future of where this new medium is heading, head to New York City, the center of the media universe and register today for the Digital Video Summit.

The Inman News Digital Video Summit is sponsored by Frontdoor.com.

Originally by Inman_News from Inman Blog on October 15, 2008, 9:40am

Plan C

Many alternatives to the Paulson rescue plan have been floated in the last few weeks, but this one has to beat them all.

John Hagelin, a self-described "world-renowned quantum physicist," says large groups of experts practicing advanced transcendental meditation techniques of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi can be mobilized in New York City and other global financial centers to defuse stress and fear.

Hagelin claims nearly 2,000 people at the "Maharishi University of Management" in Fairfield, Iowa, are already "helping to calm the nation in the midst of the global crisis."

But he advises that "a larger, more powerful group of 8,000 experts (the square root of one percent of the world’s population) is needed to neutralize worldwide fears and re-establish confidence in the global markets."

The cost to establish this group on a permanent basis, Hagelin said, "would be negligible compared to what has been lost in a single hour during the current financial crisis."

My first thought was this was a complete fabrication with no basis in reality, but the Associated Press recently documented Hagelin’s role in the transcendental meditation movement in the aftermath of the death of its founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

So if today’s new plan to recapitalize banks doesn’t work, I’m thinking Congress has probably already given Treasury the authority it would need to back an expansion of the Maharishi University of Management under The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.

It’s comforting to know we haven’t tried everything yet.

Isn’t it?