If you have a link to an MLS search, are you therefore offering the potential for you to make money, and thus commercializing your blog? Is it possible even to make a blanket statement about blogs?Creative Commons offers several different licenses by which to license your work, many of which specify that use is authorized for noncommercial work, “Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.”This is a tangentially related debate to the “are real estate blogs advertising?”… Attorney and the Courts?If you have Google Adwords, as some blogs do, (get smart) that would seem to be a commercial offering, no?This post has been sitting unattended for a couple of days.
Browsing Category RE Blogs
Define “readily apparent” for consumers
So the light blogging lasted four hours.The National Association of Realtors has either gone too far or not far enough with their ambiguous dictate: (read it quickly before it goes behind Inman’s subscription wall)Directors amended an article in the NAR Code of Ethics to state that Realtors “shall ensure that their status as real estate professionals is readily apparent in their advertising, marketing and other representations, and that the recipients of all real estate communications are, or have been, notified that those communications are from a real estate professional.”How does one define “readily apparent”?…Â Do any readers of this blog not know that I am a Realtor?…Â Does every Twitter post have to have a Realtor disclosure/announcement?…Â This could be a step in the right direction, but will indubitably be confused/confounded/rendered useless or harmful in practice.Technology seems to be moving and evolving too quickly for the NAR.Is real estate blogging advertising?
Add MLS Data to the mix, and you’ve got a winner
Thanks to the Lost Remote, I came across this story from Northwestern University’s Readership Institute site that unintentionally makes the parallel between how Realtors think of MLS data (we want to keep it in a box, and control access).One of the most striking developments in online news in the past year or so has been -the rapid proliferation of interesting database applications-…. newspapers have been leaders in this area, driven by the company’s “information center” initiative, which is yielding new organizational structures and approaches to information gathering and presentation. The “data desk” is one of the seven pillars of the company’s new approach to news.As Gannett realizes, data should be a driving force in online journalism, for at least the following reasons:- Data is “evergreen” content.- Its value to users does not end after 24 hours.- Data can be personal.- What’s more relevant to someone than, say, reported crimes in their neighborhood, or nearby property assessments?- Data can best be delivered in a medium without space constraints.Michael asks a similar question this week – Are Listings Information or Advertising?If Realtors could develop a product that had all of the information…. In the context of the Group I have been working on for the past year – what are the top 10 technological creations/developments over the past 12 months?
No Vegas for me this year
I said this last week on Twitter that I was not going to be able to go. I had firm plans to attend the NAR Convention, but the following demands require me to stay in Charlottesville:- Family- Clients- Preparing my daughter’s soccer team for an upcoming tournament- Toy Lift (my wife is on the Board) – more on this later today- A Community Land Trust meeting (of which I am on the Steering Committee).Must keep priorities in line – family, business, local impact.I look forward to following the Conference at the blog and regret that I will not be able to attend the Blogger Con. Charlottesville and Virginia will be well represented.
The Carnival and the Odysseus medal come to Charlottesville
And Charlottesville was represented well. We might not be the epicenter of real estate blogging, but to win the Carnival of Real Estate and the Odysseus Medal in the same week – wow.Daniel’s Carnival winning post on social media and mine on the Wharton School of Business’ ignorance of Buyer-Brokerage.I am humbled and honored to have been among the 12 finalists.
Journalist or Realtor?
Might there be an overlap here? Not all real estate bloggers would qualify as journalists (and some journalists might not win that argument either). Can a “Realtor/Blogger” coexist? Or might he someday have to choose?
NAR stepping into wildly unknown territory
Posting unfavorable/unflattering (but truthful) comments to BlogsThis is already covered in the Code of Ethics:Article 15REALTORS® shall not knowingly or recklessly make false or misleading statements about competitors, their businesses, or their business practices. (Amended 1/92)• Standard of Practice 15-1REALTORS® shall not knowingly or recklessly file false or unfounded ethics complaints. (Adopted 1/00)• Standard of Practice 15-2The obligation to refrain from making false or misleading statements about competitors’ businesses and competitors’ business practices includes the duty to not knowingly or recklessly repeat, retransmit, or republish false or misleading statements made by others. This duty applies whether false or misleading statements are repeated in person, in writing, by technological means (e.g., the Internet), or by any other means.