Web 2.Whatever

Hi, I'm going first-person today. I'm Greg Sax, Communications Manager here at MAAR. You may recognize my voice from our weekly enotes or printed newsletter. I also do a weekly blog post over at the St. Paul Real Estate Blog every Wednesday. Usually I'm talking about things like the Naugahyde booths at Mancini's or the off-leash dog park at Arlington-Arkwright, but today's contribution might actually fit better over here at The Skinny, where it also applies. So let's co-opt some content for wider readership...

There is a fair chance that this blog will be obsolete by next year at this time.

Isn't that something? Today's blogs are tomorrow's shoezoos, or whatever the Next Big Thing will be. That's how fast things move now. If you're in the real estate business, you'd better get used to it. If you're in any business, you'd better get used to it. If you're a consumer of things, you already seem to be used to it, because you've proven to be a resilient lot, and all this recession hoo-hah will do nothing to thwart you from the opportunities inherent in advancement.

People of Earth, this is my advice: Don't kid yourself on this fast-forward world. In the lifetime of the youngest generation that could possibly be reading this post, big-time, 100-year sorts of things are happening. Things that match oil and steel and electricity. Things that were once inconceivable to any of us over the age of 30.

Microwaves are magic. Halo 3 is born from Atari 2600. LPs, tapes, and CDs take up too much space; LimeWire and iTunes rule the coop. The Internet...uh-duh.

I was convinced in 1992 that the Internet was going to be the be-all. I was a supercool early adopter of things Internet because I was lucky enough to work a couple of buildings away from where "gopher" dug its first holes at the University of Minnesota. I knew what was coming. And I invested. And I became unbelievably rich. Okay, that's not at all true. But I can at least claim that I knew the world was forever changed.

The power of the Internet will continue to expand. What I was once only able to do from a slow-booting desktop computer on the third-floor of a secure building...is now done from the comfort of a recliner in my living room on an always-on laptop without wires...will be done one day from the comfort of deep slumber without keystrokes or any other sort of physical contact with my LittleNemo G12 astralputer.

Blogs are weak like flat HTML pages were weak three years ago. Were weak like Flash-enabled, slow-loading intro pages were two years ago. Were weak like 360-degree tours and green screen, walk-onto-the-page video was last year. Were weak like Twitter is this year.

I rip on blogs as my blogging activity is increasing. I say this as I write for a blog we just created this year. I say this as I'm spending two months overhauling a personal blog. I say this because I know I will inevitably have to learn some other form of communication. Blogs may soon be obsolete, but "soon" can mean a lot of things and I still think it's a logical step toward whatever's next.

The choice is fold or fight. I'm taping my fists and skipping extra rope.

To get to the point. (Really? You have a point?) I don't normally make a habit of promoting other websites and other consultant-types, because ultimately I think MAAR has the ultimate consultant-types and you should contact me or Jeff Allen or Mark Allen for public engagements and we will motivate and amaze you. But the folks at 1000Watt Consulting are thinking as brightly as their wattage indicates, and they should be further encouraged. The Real Estate Map for Web 2.0 is quite good.

So REALTORS®...will you survive Web 2.Whatever? Will you REALTORS® even be involved in what's next? Or will consumers be using Realtorocity, Realpedia, or...?

Comments

[Marc Davison]

Let's amaze them together!
Great Post
Marc "500watt" Davison

[Aaron Petty]

Funny Greg I hit your RSS tab after posting a comment on the 1000 Watt "Trouble with Twitter" post. So neither blogs nor Twitter are weak in my mind. What is weak is thinking "Information is our commodity". Shouldn’t that have died with the controlled distribution of the printed MLS books? What is weak in my mind is the focus of a broker on the agent and not the end user. What is weak in my mind is continuing the practices of leveraging listings to create leads. What is weak in my mind is replicating the same data in a myriad of opaque seas for our clients to navigate in. We need to finally kill the old gate keeping business model. We need to finally kill the old gate keeping business model and truly serve. I see a shift toward the service industry specializing in consultation and project management. Because how am I going to market any differently then the next brokerage… really, truly, differently? I’m not! I’m just leveraging more of the most effective tools of today. I am on top of the tools of today and there effectiveness. I watch the horizon. Bring the results you client contract and that will be your prospecting. Business will come to you… In light of hyper access to market data what am I leveraging? How much more or less relevant is sphere of influence in a hyper connected world? What is it that I should be influencing? What will grow, what will wither, and what will morph…?