A few years back, I watched MLSNI turn off their consumer facing website because members took the stance that this was reducing broker/agent centric website exposure. Ironically, seemingly overnight, this almost perfectly coincided with the flash flood of Syndication Portals (Trulia, Zillow, GoogleBase, etc).
At first, the industry was very apprehensive to giving their listings away for free. Over time they eased up, and saw how they can leverage these advertising vehicles. In all essence, they are just a more refined online classifieds model (such as the newspapers, but focused). More and more of these advertising sites began to appear, somewhat diluting the benefits, increasing the work for exposure (see Andrews Syndication Article to battle this issue) and calling more attention to what was really going on. These sites were filling a critical void in the consumer marketplace.
The new year is here and already it has brought about huge changes! Earlier this month, RESO Chair Michael Wurzer wrote an open letter to Yahoo!, Google, Trulia and Zillow to get them to support RETS as a common data standard for everyone in the industry. I was going write about this topic anyway but a recent press release makes it even more relevant. Today, Yahoo!, Google, Trulia and Zillow as well as several other aggregators have all agreed to work with RESO to adopt common data standards to make it possible for brokers to send a single listings feed to multiple web sites.
This is a big win and opportunity for RETS. With the influx of a large amount of new blood into RESO, The RETS schema has the potential to grow into THE data standard for real estate data sharing. But I also see a danger here for RETS. If the RESO and the RETS community does not seize on this opportunity and run with it, these companies will work together and create something else. The reason they are all willing to work together on this is because there it a huge need, and if RETS is unable to fill that need, something else will. So, lets hope that RESO and the RET community see this opportunity seize the data!
Q:Whats the best remedy for your impending sensory overload and the need to share all the knowledge and ideas you are going to come up with while walking through the over 700 exhibitors on the REALTOR Expo TradeShow Floor?
A:Sit back, relax and BLOG about it!
And once again, CRT is your knight in cat-5 cable by hosting the super-swank, ultra-hip, plush and refreshment stocked bloggers lounge at the NAR Expo in Vegas. Yes, last year we were tucked away, a bit tricky to find, but that added to the intrigue and mystique!
So this year, to kick things off right, and let everyone in on the best kept secret during convention, CRT and the REALTOR.org team are hosting a Blogging/Expo kick off event in the Blogger’s Lounge (The Venetian Fourth - Room 4605).
If you are a blogger, join us Monday November 12th at 5:30PM. Meet the REALTOR.org Team, CRT and more importantly, learn the location of the lounge so you can plan your retreat from sensory overload during the rest of the week.
For the past few months, one of the topics we’ve been talking about when on the road have been podcasts. Most of time its been talking to Realtors and how they can use podcasts in business. Last week I was invited to speak at the Arizona Association of REALTORS® Leadership Conference. I spoke with the AEs and leadership of Arizona about how to use podcasts in member communication and cited the NAR President’s Podcast as an example.
I was excited to go to Arizona and speak about this topic if only because Arizona has become a podcast (and other new media) hotbed. There are many reasons for this, but one major reason is that Arizona is home to the headquarters of Farpoint Media. More than half of the podcasts I listen to on a regular basis are part of the Farpoint family.
A few years ago, when I decided that I needed to be more educated on podcasts, I searched around for podcasts on topics that interested me and the first one I came across was Slice of SciFi. As a big science fiction geek, I knew I’d be entertained by a show promising weekly news and interviews on the world of SciFi and Fantasy TV and movies. What I didn’t expect the first time I listened to the show was how professionally produced the podcast is and how entertaining the hosts are. From there I got sucked into some other Farpoint shows that were occasionally mentioned including Wingin’ It (now Wingin’ It 3D,) Speaking of Beer, and Cover to Cover.
I’ve had an idea kicking around in the back of head for a few months, but not the time to write it down. As I’m currently on a flight with some time to kill, I thought I’d write an abstract of the idea for the blog to wet people’s appetites for a white paper to come soon.
In talking with realtors and developers who make use of our various RETS projects like libRETS, ezRETS, and vieleRETS it seems a majority of users are replicating the MLS database for web-based advertising purposes. Following CRT’s mission of playing with a diverse set of technology and following Perl’s Motto of “there’s more than one way to do it” I’ve been tinkering with an idea of how MLS’s can share that data in alternative ways.
Since every good project needs a catchy name that you can turn into a fun acronym, I’ve decided to call this the Syndicated Advertising-based Listings Engine or SALE. Besides, this makes promoting the project fun with catchphrases like “Everybody wants a SALE!” But what is this project you ask? Continue reading ‘Yet another data feed method or “Everybody wants a SALE!”’
We have been quiet, but not bored! The last couple weeks have been a roller coaster of excitement. We went from an internal IT strategic planning retreat (two days of food induced brainstorming) to a moving our facilities from NAR-6th floor to NAR-4th floor. Its been crazy!
With that, we needed to clean up one of CRT’s dirty little secrets, the CRT server room was a closet - seriously, the servers have all been stashed in a closet for the past 5+ years. Well, we have grown up. This week we finished rolling out 4 IBM Rackmount servers into the NAR Server Room - environmentally controlled, remote IP viewable - all the bells and whistles that an IT kid would love.
Keith handled the code server (code.crt.realtors.org) and the mail server (mail.crt.realtors.org). I handled the web server (www.crt.realtors.org) and our internal file server. Its always fun cleaning and rearranging the servers! All the servers got baselined with a nice fresh install of Centos5, and then we went from there. Maia is protecting our mail, WordPress is keeping us vocal, and Samba is storing our files.
The cost for Dunkin Donuts to help push us through this: $20
The cost for all the software to run the entire CRT IT shop: FREE
The cost of knowing this: Priceless
I promise to get back blogging better next week, as well as keeping up with the deep links!
P.S. - this was my test I didnt fudge up the blog!
I’m thinking about getting this Ogio backpack as a new laptop backpack. Anyone have any experience with them? I’m having a hard time finding one in a store to check out. http://www.ogio.com/product.php?product=128
Thank Heavens for RSS! CRT is able to stay in touch with the outside world much more efficiently because of it. We wind up IM’ing, emailing, yelling over the cubes to have each other check out something techie, amazing or bizarre. We feel like we are leaving everyone else out of our fun. So starting this week, we will have a Deep Link Recap. These are links that we found informative, thought provoking or maybe even got a little chuckle out of.
A few years back, I watched MLSNI turn off their consumer facing website because members took the stance that this was reducing broker/agent centric website exposure. Ironically, seemingly overnight, this almost perfectly coincided with the flash flood of Syndication Portals (Trulia, Zillow, GoogleBase, etc).
For the past few months, one of the topics we’ve been talking about when on the road have been podcasts. Most of time its been talking to Realtors and how they can use podcasts in business. Last week I was invited to speak at the 
We have been quiet, but not bored! The last couple weeks have been a roller coaster of excitement. We went from an internal IT strategic planning retreat (two days of food induced brainstorming) to a moving our facilities from NAR-6th floor to NAR-4th floor. Its been crazy!
