Web2.0 is About You

Wonderful video from a Kansas professor…

(via ProBlogger)

I’ve been told I move a bit fast in my seminars (more than once!), but I found this guy to move at light-speed! Interestingly, if the video makes complete sense to you, then you will have no need for my presentation. However, if you’d be interested in learning a bit more about how consumers matter in this web2.0 world (i.e. “you matter”), and how you, as an agent, can flip this logic to use these web2.0 tools so that you matter (i.e. “brand you”), then I’d love to see you at my Seattle seminar on February 20th! (Or in Oakland, CA the next day!)

So far, the feedback from the seminars has been overwhelmingly positive. I was a little hesitant to make a big deal out of the seminar before I ran a few trials because my presentation is more-than-slightly unconventional and I started to doubt myself. It wasn’t until I heard from some of the attendees that it was one of the best real estate presentation they had ever been to that I started to feel more comfortable that I might be on to something big. 🙂 Also, both Jeff, Rudy and Brian give some encouraging feedback that will definitely keep me presenting at a few more seminars!

By the way, my presentation style was highly influenced by a short presentation given by Chris Smoak where he was able to move at the speed of light because the presentation moved with him. (Chris is the guy behind one of my favorite mash-ups ever, Bus Monster.) After witnessing Chris in action, I just knew I’d have to create a similar presentation some day.

Finally, Greg has been posting the audio from my presentation over on the Bloodhound blog (Part 1, Part 2). Personally, I think the seminar is simply too long for an audio presentation (it NEEDS the visuals!), but some may find it interesting, nonetheless.

The Perfect Real Estate 2.0 Company

[photopress:timeYOU_big.jpg,thumb,alignright]If I had millions of dollars like Jim and Shirley Wilson now have (254M Powerball this week) I would create what I feel is a void in market today. I would take a Zillow like property evaluation tool and add a social networking back end to it. This was actually some of the conversations Dustin, Robbie and I had over a year ago when I was first introduced to RCG.

Anyway, what the market needs now is a valuation tool like Zillow that is enhanced by taking in to account neighborhoods, the particular street the house is on, the property’s zoning, the neighbors to your left and right and many many more. Zillow has added features to allow home owners to update their statistics for a closer estimate, but there is nothing out there that allows the brainchild behind Web 2.0’s success… YOU! (also a reason I feel the Web 2.0 bubble is far from bursting).

This would allow owners, neighbors and most importantly realtors to add comments to their communities, neighboring houses and their own house. I can only imagine how valuable this content would be to future home owners. Matter of a face, this would add some type of accountability to neighbors and home owners to be ‘good neighbors’. I guess this would be like a Better Business Bureau for home owners. I am sure all of the tenured agents out there have heard horror stories of their clients having troubles with a new home where the Form 17 disclosures could not provide any protection. This would be especially valuable in multi family communities.

[photopress:my_currency.jpg,thumb,alignleft]San Francisco’s my-currency launched today looking to tap in to this resource. John Cook’s blog talks about it as My Currency takes on Zillow which I understand, but I feel the underlying message here is putting the power in the people’s hand. It is easy for a site to put together stats that combines total square footage by numbers of beds/bath times a special area by area multiplier (I assume this is similar to the formula most of these sites use), but the does that mean someone will actually pay that price? If this were true, I would sell my house today for 200k more than I think it is worth because Zillow says so 🙂