I was contacted recently by the Virginia Association of REALTORS to speak at their Legislative and Education Conference in February. (I’ll be in Richmond on Valentine’s Day, if you’re in the area.) The Association representative who contacted me asked if I could speak on listing syndication but said I wasn’t restricted to that, and so now I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to talk about. I know that listing syndication will be a key part of the discussion, but I want to give a broader context to the syndication discussion, too.
I have this theory I’ve been batting around for about a year that the MLS industry is approaching what I’ve been calling a perfect storm. I described the perfect storm early on in the FBS Blog as having three fronts: (1) brokerage consolidation pushing MLS consolidation; (2) the web 2.0 movement, both inside and outside of real estate, is engaging consumers like never before; and (3) the Department of Justice lawsuit against the NAR, claiming NAR’s policies regarding use of MLS data on the web are anti-competitive and harming consumers. My theory is that each of these forces are coming together at the same time and could produce a perfect storm that will change the MLS industry forever.
In my post a few days ago called Attention!, I mentioned Andrew Groves’ book Only The Paranoid Survive and what Groves describes as “10x inflection points”, which I think is another way of describing my “perfect storm.” Importantly, Mr. Groves asks, “How do we know whether a change signals a strategic inflection point? The only way is through the process of clarification that comes from broad and intensive debate.” Mr. Groves is talking about strategy within a company, but I think the same approach is valuable on a broader scale, too.
And that leads me back to the question of whether we’re rushing along so fast in our lives, putting out multi-tasking fires, that we don’t have time, energy or patience for serious contemplation or “broad and intensive debate.” Are we listening for the signals or just hearing the noise? Without a doubt, the RE.net is one place where intense and well-articulated debate occurs, but is that really a “broad” debate? I have a strong feeling that many who should be a part of this conversation are not. Whether the industry is facing a 10x inflection point is an open question, but I believe it is a question well worth considering seriously.
But here’s a preliminary question: When do we have time for this debate to happen? Conferences are great, but an hour here and an hour there rarely produces anything new. When do we stop long enough to listen to each other and expand our vision of the future? When do we have the broad and intensive debate that seems necessary? I’ve written previously that the future of MLS is now and I’m wondering who will be the designers of that future?
As I consider that question, a pattern I’ve noticed here at FBS comes to mind. The pattern is this: (1) hire new programmer; (2) new programmer is super productive; (3) super productive programmer gets more responsibility; (4) super productive programmer gets bogged down with a whole bunch of super important things. This is what I was trying to say in my post the other day about paying attention. The new guy can pay attention so much easier because he’s new and doesn’t have an inbox crammed full. This is why upstarts often come in and blow people away with innovation, because they can form a small group in a far away place and take the time to think fresh.
So, my question as I look forward to the VAR leadership conference is whether the leaders of MLSs and Associations today will take the time to seriously contemplate the potential for a 10x inflection point or perfect storm brewing on their horizon. How will these forces effect the future? Can we design our own future?
Jim Duncan and Galen Ward asked for a post on copyright and the MLS, so here it is. There are many experts in the area of copyright and MLS data, including Brian Larson and Russ Cofano (though Russ is now in-house at John L. Scott). I suspect Galen knows more about copyrighting MLS data than I do, given Russ’s involvement on RainCity Guide over the years. Anyway, I’ll respond to the call and at least explain what I meant about copyright transfer in my post on branded videos. Here are the basics:
That’s basically it. The agent is the author (most often) of the remarks and photos and other media, but they often license those works to their broker and the MLS. The key question is what are the terms of that license. Take a look at the contracts you have with your broker and your MLS. What do they say? If they don’t say something about copyright, you probably need to amend them. It would be great if you could let us know what you find by commenting this post.
“Was the babysitter fun last night?”, I said to my daughters this morning. They responded, nearly in unison, “Yeah! She only sent one text message to her friends all night.”
Multitasking messes with the brain in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires—the constant switching and pivoting—energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning. We concentrate on the act of concentration at the expense of whatever it is that we’re supposed to be concentrating on. . . .
Even worse, certain studies find that multitasking boosts the level of stress-related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline and wears down our systems through biochemical friction, prematurely aging us. In the short term, the confusion, fatigue, and chaos merely hamper our ability to focus and analyze, but in the long term, they may cause it to atrophy.
Just prior to the above quote from the article is perhaps the most important sentence I’ve read in a long time: “[Multi-tasking] isn’t working, it never has worked, and though we’re still pushing and driving to make it work and puzzled as to why we haven’t stopped yet, which makes us think we may go on forever, the stoppage or slowdown is coming nonetheless, and when it does, we’ll be startled for a moment, and then we’ll acknowledge that, way down deep inside ourselves (a place that we almost forgot even existed), we always knew it couldn’t work.”
I go to Mass once or twice per week, depending on whether it is my week to be the lector at the noon Mass on Mondays. The one hour I spend in Church on those days are the only times I don’t carry my Treo. No matter what else I’m doing, I have it with me, and am checking it pretty much constantly. (Actually, I do have it with me during those Monday Masses but I make sure it is shut off.) After the Eucharist, I focus on a prayer called Teach Me To Listen, which I found years ago while on a silent retreat. The prayer is simple but powerful, entreating me to listen more. This prayer speaks to me because I know, deep inside, that I need to listen more. This morning, as soon as I started praying to myself the now familiar words (“Teach me, O God, to listen to those nearest me, my family . . .”), the words of my daughters that morning rang out. What they valued most about the baby-sitter was that she didn’t text too much, which, of course, meant that she was at least somewhat present to them. She was paying them attention, a priceless gift, too easily withheld.
How many times am I splitting my attention among my wife or daughters or co-workers or friends or clients because I’m wondering who’s posted what on their blog or my blog or e-mailed me or Twittered me or someone or updated their Facebook or my wall or befriended me. In those moments, why can’t I remember the prayer that’s so important to me? Why are all these distractions more important than listening, instead of pretending to listen? Though I’ve been afflicted for some time with these distractions, blogging has made it worse. Now I’m always wanting to read through my reader to see who is writing what, and at least some of that is because I’m wondering if they’re writing about me. There are many wonderful things about blogging and reading blogs (not the least of which is discovering articles like the one quoted above from The Atlantic), but the constant intercession into my life is not one of them. Blogging is like a tornado, sucking my attention up and away.
I’ve said to many and even written that blogging is a great way to develop and communicate strategy, which is core to my role as CEO of FBS. I still believe that. At the same time, the attention drain that can come with blogging is dangerous and easily counter-productive. I recently read Andrew Grove’s Only The Paranoid Survive and the core advice he gives is that you need to constantly listen for the subtle yet profound signals of what he calls “10x inflection points.” Is it possible to think with all the noise around us? How do we separate the signal from the noise?
Even in this post, my attention has shifted from my family to my business. I think loving your job is a great thing and I do but I love my family more. If the baby-sitter can do a better job by not texting so much, how much more important is that for me, their father? But you know what dogs me? I know how much my clients love it when I respond right away to their questions, day or night. I want to respond to their questions. I want to communicate and engage and be friends with my clients and co-workers and my family. What I need, though, is to be present and that’s not possible all at once. This I know, with certainty, way deep down inside. The Treo must be turned off more than just one or two hours a week. Prayers are great, actions are better. So, good night, I’m going to kiss my wife and I leave you with my prayer:
Teach Me to Listen
Teach me to listen, O God,
to those nearest me,
my family, my friends, my co-workers.
Help me to be aware that
no matter what words I hear,
the message is,
“Accept the person I am. Listen to me.”
Teach me to listen, my caring God,
to those far from me –
the whisper of the hopeless,
the plea of the forgotten,
the cry of the anguished.
Teach me to listen, O God my Mother,
to myself.
Help me to be less afraid
to trust the voice inside –
in the deepest part of me.
Teach me to listen, Holy Spirit,
for your voice –
in busyness and in boredom,
in certainty and in doubt,
in noise and in silence.
Teach me, Lord, to listen. Amen.
- Adapted by John Veltri, S.J.
I normally get about 38 MPG in the deep winter in my Prius but I was only getting 29 MPG this morning as I drove to Alexandria, MN, because it was -13 degrees Farenheit. Yeah, you read that right, MINUS 13. That’s cold.
Agent Highlights: This is the second in what may become a series of posts highlighting real estate agents we know who are blogging or pursuing other interesting approaches to their real estate business. Most of the posts probably will focus on FBS clients, because that’s who we know best, but we’re certainly not limiting ourselves to that, so send us a note if you’ve got an interesting approach you’d like us to highlight.
A bit of unsolicited advice: more editing could be done to make some of the videos more to the point and the one of the vacant lot could have used more narration and highlights. I loved the one tromping through the snow, though, because it really shows one of the most important parts of the property, namely how the home sits in relation to the other homes in the development. Too many agents would try to hide that fact and Craig makes it crystal clear in a video. I think that’s the kind of transparency that builds trust. Very cool.
I added my first widget today, the Dilbert Widget. I love Dilbert and have been reading Scott Adams’ blog for awhile, and he just announced the Dilbert Widget today. Generally, I’ve been reluctant to add widgets, because I think they slow down the loading of the site and I haven’t seen the value in most of them. I’m experimenting with the Dilbert Widget, though, because it resonates with me and one of the core focuses of the FBS Blog, which is software development in an employee owned company. I’m trying as hard as I can not to be the Pointy-Haired Boss. So, if nothing else, maybe having the Dilbert Widget on the FBS Blog will remind me what not to do on a daily basis. But, hopefully you’ll all get a laugh out of it occasionally as well.
A few days ago, I posted about a video from Jeremy Hart and a couple of the comments here at the FBS Blog and over at Phoenix Real Estate Technology Exchange highlighted questions about the “branding” at the beginning of the video, which I thought might be worthwhile addressing further.
First, let me get some of the questions about the MLS rules out of the way. The flexmls Web system allows the MLS to specify whether users can upload branded or unbranded videos. In addition, the MLS can specify that only unbranded videos be sent in e-mails or displayed on public web sites like IDX from FBS. In this case, Jeremy’s MLS allows both branded and unbranded videos to be uploaded and e-mailed and Jeremy’s video was uploaded as branded. All is okay with the MLS rules.
The theory behind these rules is pretty simple: The MLS is a cooperative information exchange and the brokers and agents promoting the listings of other agents would prefer not to be promoting those other agents at the same time. For example, agents often want to remove the name of the listing agent (if it’s not them) from detail reports before sending them on to their clients and they don’t want branded information showing up in the agent remarks on their IDX sites or other venues they may promote. They want the data presented raw without hype from their competitors.
But this raises another question entirely when it comes to video. How does one create a video like Jeremy’s, where he is the host/narrator, without “branding”? Jeremy could have omitted the NRVliving sign at the beginning, but is it really practical to start a video without introducing yourself? I suppose the question becomes how detailed the introduction gets, but that seems like an awfully slippery slope.
Another issue raised by video, virtual tours and even pictures is copyright. Upon creation, the video is copyrighted by the author, in this case Jeremy. Doesn’t Jeremy have a right to include a statement of authorship to preserve the copyright? Some MLSs transfer copyright to uploaded works to the MLS, but I doubt many include video in that transfer. And videos and virtual tours are just links, so what copyright is transferred, if any, from the uploading of a link. For those MLSs that do attempt to transfer copyright to video, are the authors/agents comfortable with that? Do they really intend to transfer authorship and ownership of that work to the MLS or their broker? Who owns the video linked in the MLS is a good question.
I raise these questions hesitantly because I can see some MLSs getting caught up in the details and deciding it’s all too much trouble and banning innovations like videos. As Bob Bemis, ARMLS’ CEO, observed about an MLS trying to control virtual tour captions: “So rather than give agents a new tool, with which to be innovative and different, they took away the tool because in the hands of a very small minority it might be ‘dangerous.’”
Don’t go down that path. Video is a great innovation and has the potential to provide more in-depth and decisive information about listings. Some of the best videos are the ones like Jeremy’s, where the expert, in this case the listing agent, explains the details of what’s making the house valuable. That there is “branding” in conveying that information seems outweighed by the value of the information. To the extent that some disagree, they can always choose not to send videos with their listing e-mails or exclude them from their IDX feeds, but I think those choices should be made at the individual level and not system-wide. What do you think?
Every so often I get an e-mail from the MLSInformation group hosted by Internet Crusade. Lately, it feels like the bias of the editors is getting a bit much, especially when the affiliations aren’t disclosed clearly. Here’s part of an e-mail I received today:
Doris Bennett asks:
Does anyone know of any web programmers who know how to create XML feeds. Creating an XML feed involves building a script that automatically creates a file for your company’s listings. Our MLS cannot provide this for the source we need.
Rather than speaking with web programmers, why dont you talk to the folks at Point2Agent? P2A is syndicating real estate listing content to numerous real estate web portals and they probably have a good handle on this. That will also give you the opportunity to broaden your brokers marketing reach substantially. Forward thinking MLSs are taking this route. Look at Houston, for goodness sake! Why there is not a MAD RUSH to use this technology astounds me!
The change in seasons was evident at the NAR meeting in Las Vegas:
Warmest regards,
Frances Flynn Thorsen, e-PRO, SRS, ACREâ„¢, Certified e-PRO Trainer
Managing Editor
RealTown.com
I think this editor should have disclosed that her boss, Saul Klein, is now the CEO of Point2 Agent, the company she is advocating. I know that Saul announced this himself to the MLSinformation community a few weeks ago, but I still think these kinds of promotions should always be qualified when presented in a community forum seeking less biased advice.
From writing the FBS Blog (which is a vendor blog subject to my own biases) over the last nine months or so, I know that drawing the line between advertising and information is difficult. At the same time, posts like the one above seem not to care about such distinctions at all but rather seem intent on blurring the line completely, which makes it seem more like disinformation than MLSInformation.
One of the best videos I’ve seen linked into the flexmls Web system is from Jeremy Hart at NRV Living in the New River Valley MLS.
Jeremy highlights the energy efficiency of the Auz-Bloc or Timbercrete siding on the house. I think this is the kind of detail for which buyers are looking and it raises an excellent question of if and how such details should be tracked in the MLS system. As Greg Kilwein from FBS has said, “MLS systems today capture what is common about properties but what sells the property is what’s uncommon.” The MLS could leverage the long-tail of real estate search, but the question is whether it should? Data quality is a constant concern and trying to track extra details like this may make that more difficult. On the other hand, if these kinds of details are what sell homes, maybe the agents would be more inclined to pay attention to these kinds of details. Either way, capturing these details in a video like Jeremy has done is very useful.
When I go through Google Reader each day, I tend to go feed by feed using the left-side tree-view of feeds. Sometimes (rarely) I use the “All Items” option at the top, which lumps all the feeds together chronologically. This behavior just struck me as interesting, because I used to think I would really love software that could aggregate all my e-mail, RSS feeds, news, etc., into one big list. I’d then be able to power through that list more efficiently. Now I’m thinking that wouldn’t work, that the context of each piece of software is important to usability. What do you think?
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