I have news, but some of it is getting a little stale. My apologies. I have been buried, not that this is unusual.
As Kris Berg reports in her inimitable way, Redfin has relaunched, rebranded and all but reinvented itself, establishing a beachhead in Boston in the process. As far as I can tell, the big news is the company’s new logo, which features an image of Eve acting on the bad advice of a snake. Every picture tells a story, don’t it?
Sellsius has also launched its product offering, a kind of searchable, semi-permanent, for-pay Craigslist. This looks to me like a Red Ocean, but what do I know?
That much has been reported elsewhere. This hasn’t: Territory Real Estate has launched its flat-fee buyer-brokerage in Boston and greater Massachusetts. Proving the appeal if not the merit of the Red Ocean strategy (first explained to me by Zillow.com’s David Gibbons), Territory immediately goes on the attack — against Redfin.
But: Screw all that. There are matters of greater moment.
For instance, is weblogging headed for an icy, entropic death? TransparentRE says not, at least not for real estate weblogs. This much is obvious: Weblogging is a fad, like CB radio in the seventies. Anyone who didn’t expect it to fall off dramatically was self-deluded. But there are two important differences between weblogging and the ordinary Rubik’s Cube style of fad: First, viral blogging is a new communications medium, the backbone of the alternative media. And second, owners of commercially-motivated weblogs have an enduring interest in persistence beyond fad appeal. The number of weblogs doesn’t really matter, nor does the number of putatively “active” weblogs. Sites that draw a decent number of evanescent eyes from search traffic may generate income for their owners. But, in the long run, the only weblogs that matter are the ones that can attract a stable population of repeat visitors.
Two more and I’m out of time: A WordPress Theme Generator, so you can express yourself with unborrowed tastes. And the irrepressible, irreplaceable Dave Smith with a strategy to suss the Google Sandbox with a Trustbox instead.
To close, here’s a quote for the Red Ocean Navy:
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that something is too competitive. Once you subtract the people who don’t work very hard, or the people who aren’t as good as you, your competition shrinks dramatically.
It goes for us, too.
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
Richard Cook says:
hi greg,
i took redfin’s bill of rights and ran it through a visualization tool known as many eyes. it was really just a lark, i am sure you or your readers have more interesting data to feed it. see my results at:
http://sellsmartnews.blogspot.com
April 27, 2007 — 2:32 pm
David G from Zillow.com says:
Logic dictates that blogging must peak (stall’s the wrong word) but I no longer trust technorati’s comment on that subject. I’ve found their search results increasingly incomplete over the past few quarters — to the point that google’s spam-ridden blog search is now my preference. Anyone else have an opinion on technorati?
April 28, 2007 — 12:28 am