Welcome!
Thanks, Daniel. People win the lottery every day too! Now that Egyption guy in Gahlord's post who told all his Tweeter buddies that he was in jail...that's great Twitter execution. As for real estate, I still don't think it's a very useful activity. Dave www.FirstandElm.com
Social Networking may work as an addition to a solid overall marketing strategy. However, I fail to see how some of these applications have any real relevance to real estate sales (emphasis on "sales"). Take Twitter, for example. I've used it (a little) and I've talked to others who enjoy it. Every time I ask someone if Twitter can help them sell a house they look at me like I'm insane. We have a programmer who works at our company. He's younger than me and very bright. OK, he's a lot younger than me and way smarter. He uses Twitter, and 15 other social networking tools that most of us have never heard of. He absolutely laughs at the suggestion that Twitter can help real estate agents sell homes. Is he wrong? Do you guys know something we don't? Maybe Bernice is going to tell us all about it in part II of this series. But, I can't wait.
Joel: I don't agree with your statement that "Real estate search is inherently a mobile activity". I don't think consumers head out into their cars and then start searching for property while they're in the field. It's nice to have technology that lets them do that and I'm sure people will use their iPhones to help find property information. But, people still use their computers to search for homes and I don't think that's going to change too dramatically any time soon.