… and it was well and truly smushed on there by hackers and spammers.

Last Wednesday I reported banner advertising on my  personal Facebook profile, along with what looked like sponsored posts inside my timeline …

I was fooled.

Unfortunately the real truth, the ugly reality is that my browser was hijacked by malware and some (probably complicit) opportunists tagged me in those shoe photos.

I kind of suspected that something was wrong with my computer when someone else complained about being tagged – and she was pretty explicit in her language about wanting it out of her timeline

I guess the biggest clue was when I checked all the usual sources Mashable, Makeuseof, AllFacebook etc only to find no other reporting of new ad placement.

As a warning to others, an application called Babylon (also a Firefox addon) and a Firefox addon called I want this one, were responsible for hoodwinking me.

I spent literally hours yesterday trying to eradicate Babylon. The uninstall did not work, after lots of research a program called Revo  Uninstaller came to my rescue and once I had uninstalled Firefox and reinstalled it the Addons in Firefox actually became visible and I was able to complete the rescue.

I have been half expecting sponsored stories to appear as it’s been widely reported recently. Facebook has also recently updated its Help Center .

TechCrunch reported in December  “Starting in January 2012, Facebook will gradually begin showing Sponsored Stories social ads in the main news feed of the web version of the site, a representative of the company tells us. Facebook hasn’t shown ads in the news feed since 2008, so this has big ramifications for advertisers and the user experience.”

Here’s a video with an overview of the concept:

And here is a quick screenshot of the scammy taggers photo, with me tagged along with a bunch of other victims:

Rather interesting is Mark Zuckerberg take on hackers.

Mark talked about Hackers in his letter to prospective shareholders.  Here is an extract:

The Hacker Way

As part of building a strong company, we work hard at making Facebook the best place for great people to have a big impact on the world and learn from other great people. We have cultivated a unique culture and management approach that we call the Hacker Way.

The word “hacker” has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers. In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it can be used for good or bad, but the vast majority of hackers I’ve met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.

In an article in Wired Magazine  the author, Ben Parr writes: “Thirty years ago, I began writing a book about hackers, a subculture that most people did not know even existed. As I researched the book, I discovered a way of thinking, a way of being, shared among hackers of different generations. In my book Hackers, I codified this collective sense of values, calling it the Hacker Ethic. In many ways those implicit values are what basis of The Hacker Way that Zuckerberg describes in his letter.”

Unfortunately the hackers I came across this week clearly did not share Mark Zuckerberg’s description.

So Facebook announced it’s IPO yesterday …

You would have to be on a desert island not to notice everyone talking about it.

There are some staggering facts coming out of the disclosures.

Did you know that Bono (of U2 fame) owns $750,000 worth of shares?

I was staggered too. 1 billion in profits last year, private jets, chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg making a total of $30,873,579 in 2011.

But as I said the fun is about to begin, the “MySpacing” of Facebook if we are not very careful

Facebook is notorious for trying out new features or rolling them out in small increments – which might explain why I’m seeing these changes and you may not.

On Tuesday I noticed a banner ad right below my Profile Timeline – an add for PetMeds

Then I noticed a strip under the sponsored stories with bright flashing graphics. One ad for games even started to talk to me when i moused over ..

… and it wasn’t long after that that ads started appearing in my timeline.

Then this morning I get sponsored posts in my timeline with adverts for women’s shoes.

Chris Smith wrote an illuminating article yesterday “Facebook just sold out. Wait and see how greedy they get now that they are public. There will be ads everywhere!” -Joe America.

Is this just the start or is there worse to come? Because the last thing Facebook needs right now is everyone heading over to Google+

Several Facebook friends have said I can’t complain because it’s free, but this might be the thin edge of the wedge.

When might they start charging for business pages or groups?

So what’s your take on Facebook banners and sponsored posts? Let me know!

Will real estate as we know it, be dead different by 2010?

Back in 1999 my office manager and I concluded that someday soon, a system to automate the sales paperwork process from start to finish, would be a viable business opportunity.

We were in agreement that a system like this would radically change real estate as we then knew it.

Because if it were an open system available to consumers, it would be one less reason to use a real estate professional.

But here we are 13 years later and whilst we have seen some remarkable changes to market conditions, is access to applications like Transaction Point, Docusign and Zipforms and a bunch of tablets and apps to make our life easier, really all we have to show for it?

These changes are not exactly earth shattering, or disruptive.

From the entrepreneurial side, we have a couple of sophisticated real estate sites, funded by investors – companies like Zillow, Trulia etc., that describe themselves as media companies, providing information to consumers.

These companies and thier investors want a return on their investment – not from the consumer, but from you – the real estate agent.

Where is the innovation within the real estate community itself?

What has Realtor.com done recently to make the Realtor’s life easier, apart from enhancing old stodgy products like Top Producer, creating a mobile app or supposedly “borrowing” Active Rain’s business model?

What is RPR doing apart from extracting data from MLS’s in exchange for fancy reports for Realtor members to use? Is that their only purpose at a cost of approx $20 million a year to NAR members??

Here is how RPR describe themselves:

Realtors Property Resource (RPR), NAR’s exclusive online real estate database provides REALTORS® with data on every parcel of property in the United States, giving brokers and agents valuable tools and features to make them better informed and to increase their efficiency in the marketplace.

Sorry, but this isn’t disruptive, I could actually get most if not all this stuff from my friendly Title Rep, or from the old Cyberhomes 

The Eve of Destruction debate

Marc Davidson got me thinking again about the future with his recent article “The eve of destruction, the dawn of the future” – I particularly like this line from the article:

“The main prediction is Peers communicating directly with peers. No bullshit.”

I linked Marc Davidsons blog post on a popular Facebook Group and set the group on fire with discussion and disagreement – was a conclusion reached? I’m not sure, you would have to read the thread facebook.com/groups/RaiseTheBar/

Maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel …

… because it looks like a number of factors are now coming together that would make such a document flow system and other innovations possible:

• Programming has become more sophisticated.
• Computers have become ever so more powerful and cheaper.
• Cloud based software and document storage has become mainstream.
• Entrepreneurs are becoming more resourceful and inventive.
• Artificial Intelligence AI systems have evolved.
• Watson – the IBM super computer, built to replicate human decisions.
• IBM is already working on the next generation of AI- one that has the potential to actually think like a human.

Watson was recently pitted against two good competitors on the game of Jeopardy! which makes great demands on its players – from the range of topical knowledge covered to the nuances in language employed in the clues. And it beat them by a sound margin.

In our industry Artificial Intelligence has so far really only been applied to real estate valuations, not the sales process itself. Decision tree software has barely made in past the review of loan applications.

A recent article on RealtorMag glorified the SCI-FI aspects of the future. Here are the highlights:

“Enter a world where robots, holograms, and even time travel might well upend the business of buying and selling property as we know it.”

“How awesome would it be to have a robot agent to sit through open houses? First, the robot could go through the house and clean up  ….    It could do visual scans of the prospective buyers and read the RFID chips in their credit cards and cell phones to build prospect lists and perform follow-up calls.”

Really? As Realtors can we afford to be that complacent or shallow in our analysis of what’s possible in the future?

I believe it’s possible right now, to automate the actual document and contract paper trail in the cloud.  After all the paper trail is really only a series of decision trees, albeit a super complicated one with the next moves dependent on the result of the previous decisions.

This is a big task nationally with differing requirements from State to State, but Zillow managed to gain National property tax data and Google Maps succeeded with individual lot lines for most of the country.

Another application that begs the implementation of AI is an intelligent neighborhood suggester. Robot Workshops have a rudimentary solution available right now.

But imagine if an app was linked up to Watson and speech recognition and your client could ask normal questions and get expert answers without  you and I worrying about Fair Housing?

Imagine this tied into a super duper intelligent IDX search that learned your preferences as you searched for homes.

Now we are talking, right?

The reason I believe this is all possible is the rapidly changing way we are interacting with technology.

• Watson” beat its human competitors on Jeopardy, no mean feat.
• The Watson team are collaborating with Nuance the company that owns Dragon speech recognition to make an interactive super duper “WebMD” for doctors.
• The intuitive way that Siri answers questions on the iPhone 4S, reminiscent of Watson’s ability to quickly parse through enormous amounts of data on the quiz show.
• So how long will it be before Watson is in our pocket, and Siri is just a thing of the past?
• Google has built a driverless car that actually works.

A Google spokesperson describes this remarkable feat in the video:

If Google’s software engineers can build a car that has traveled over 140,000 – examining it’s surroundings, and making decisions on all sorts of terrain without incident, then imagine what bright minds could make of the Real Estate Industry.

Back to automating the sales paperwork process:

Without doubt, there are some smart people capable of creating a system, who may already be working on this as we speak. Maybe Zillow is building one with all the money that Realtors are paying for advertising and leads

Realize that the line between the physical world and the Internet world continues to blur. Pretty soon, there will be no such thing as an “online” business or an “offline” business, or a “mobile” business and an “Internet” business.

When this system is built, will it be controlled by the Realtor community?

Will it be real estate agent friendly? How will real estate agents fit into the world that’s evolving?

Or will eliminate our involvement in this part of the real estate transaction?

Or, as is more likely, will one of the interlopers use it to draw even more traffic to their sites and even more revenue from us?

What will it look like, who will own it, how will it be paid for and monetized?

Will real estate agents involuntarily be turned into Task Rabbits, like Marc suggested in the Facebook Group debate?

Maybe agents will paid only as door openers with a lock box key?

More questions than real answers right now but as Loren Sanders said in the online debate:

“With the speed of information and change we must saddle up every day and ride like it’s our last….because you never know”

If you have an opinion please share and join the debate – this is important stuff

Marc Davison commented on the Facebook Group Raise the Bar with a couple of very relevant observations:

“I think the cycle of innovation, disruption and destruction is happening at such light speed these days that it is pretty frightening for a lot of people.

What folks ought to seriously be considering is what is going to happen in a few years when users simply talk to their computers like they now do on the their 4S and ask it real estate questions. Like:

“Find me a house in…”

“Tell me about this neighborhood…”

“Is this a quiet street…”

“What are the most frequented cafes….”

“Who is the best agent in this area…”

What will happen in a few years when a person stands infront of a home and Shazams a photo to some app that recognizes the house, provides all the info and then, by the users request, asks their phone to find homes just like it within a 3 mile radius?

What realtors and brokers need to fully understand is that if their content (listings as well as their intellectual capital – the thoughts in their heads) is not placed on public sites where data is being pulled in through API’s or from systems like SIRI, then whatever they know, whatever they have, whatever they do will not be provided to the user.”

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“This magazine doesn’t work”  is a video shared by Jason Baptiste …

…. of OnSwipe in his Keynote address at Inman Connect.

Apple products have changed our concepts and mindsets and their technology codes our minds!  The video (further down) shows how magazines are now useless and impossible to understand, for digital natives.

A 1-year old already realizes that print is irrelevant to her world, an obvious conclusion for a baby given the choice.

Adults too are glamming onto the easy of media consumption – just look at the rising numbers of tablet sales with over 40 million iPads alone.

Onswipes business is converting magazines for digital consumption using a browser. Go to slate.com on the browser of an iPad and the url automatically detects the tablet and changes the url to touch.slate.com.

It’s a very nice experience very similar to the original Flipboard which is a free app. The good news I gleaned from Onswipes site was that they have a slick WordPress plugin that will turn your blog into an interactive experience – ala Slate.

So I went ahead and installed the plugin on my site, selected a template and layout and looked good to go

EXCEPT the plugin only works with posts not pages. Any decent real estate site with neighborhood pages and home search pages is going to be out of luck, because they are not accessible.

So by all means use the plugin if you have a posts only blog, it would be a smart move.

But if you have valuable pages to display don’t bother until they decide to fix it or something better comes along.

In the meantime, please enjoy the video:

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Gary Vaynerchuk is the master, with insanely great analogies …

I have watched a number of Gary V’s speeches and this one is probably his most comprehensive and complete explanation of how social media works and how it can be leveraged – provided you are willing to “listen” .. ** warning – Gary uses strong language **

… and here is Gary again, this time with Piers Morgan (and no F bombs):

Business cards derived from your Facebook Timeline!

This is a really great idea – Moo uses the info on your timeline to create a two sided business card – you can edit the info if you want before committing to print.

I don’t know how long the promotion will last but the first 200,000 get 50 cards free!

Here is the link to Moo

Setting up your card requires Moo to access your Facebook account, then it only took about 5 minutes to complete the setup and ordering – how cool …

 Thanks to Chris Smith of Inman Next for this tip.

Here is a proof of my cards:

BTW – if you use these cards for your real estate business some States will require you to display your DRE #

This is the text from one of the follow up emails that form part of our free eBook  “I just got my real estate license, now what?” A Plan for Fast Track real estate career success. Works for struggling agents too!

Please don’t be a generalist.

People value and pay more attention to experts in their respective fields.

That’s true of most professions including Doctors, Lawyers and of course Realtors. Experts usually earn more money too!

So let’s examine, using Portland as an example, how you can become an expert in your market.

If you reside somewhere in Portland it would be a stretch to claim you cover the whole city of over half a million people, unless perhaps you were part of a team.

If your office and home are located on the edge of the city, perhaps Cedar Mill (population of a little over 12,000, with just under 5,000 households) wouldn’t it be more appropriate to concentrate on neighborhoods that are close by?

Neighborhood(s) that you can get to know really well and get excited about?

Review page 12 of the eBook again “Creating your own niche” (download link here) Use the worksheets to help you plan.

Choose a town, neighborhood, subdivision even and work your way through the MLS statistics to determine if your choice will have the potential for the number of sales that you plan for your goals.

This geographical area will be your chosen niche.

The search engine results will play a big part in your future success.

When I checked there wasn’t a single agent above the fold, let alone on the first page of Google for the search term Cedar Mills real estate, and only one for Cedar Mills homes – the results are being dominated by the Zillow and Realtor.com type sites.

Well I’m sorry, if your site is on page two of the SERPS, it just will not cut it for lead generation.

A well optimized WordPress site concentrating just on Cedar Mill with lot’s of localized content, would surely make the first page for both search terms along with other long tail results for specific neighborhoods.

Bear in mind that buyers start their search early looking to educate themselves, often some 12 to 18 months ahead of buying. At this early stage they are not ready to deal with a Realtor and their searches are usually quite general.

It’s not till they start homing in on neighborhoods that might really be of interest them, that they could start getting serious. And it’s maybe only then that your well optimized local content is going to be found and valued.

I don’t know about you but I would rather start dealing with a potential client nearer the time they are ready to buy, rather than earlier, when they have little clue as to what they want …

… wouldn’t you?

So take your time and choose wisely …

Because you are going to be putting in a lot of time and effort into marketing and content creation for your choice of niche over the next few months,  getting your business rolling.

The eBook has much more advice about how to really get to know the inventory, the comparables and how to create an outstanding marketing plan for your niche.

Our Social Media School has a WordPress module with detailed step by step tutorials. Easily get a well optimized localized real estate site up and running quickly -  More details here: www.webrealestatetools.com/school

2012, What’s Next?  Why you should STOP using Social Media …

My good friend Drew Burks is holding an event at the Hilton on the Bay Downtown San Diego

On  Dec. 8th, 2011 230pm – 6pm with a free happy hour immediately after the event.

This event is going to be really BIG! Here are a few of the topics we will be discussed …

•  Marketing Systems: what are they & why do you need them?
• Inbound Marketing: marketing automation & content maps!
• Social Media: the #1 reason why it will never work for you!
• Blogging: important stats you need to know!

The event is free, so don’t miss it!

But please pre-register here:  http://budurl.com/dec8event – lots of free prizes t00

The hotel is located right by the waterfront next to the Convention Center:

I got my real estate license, now what?

Every day people from all walks of life enter real estate, with big dreams and great expectations. They are beautifully trained on how to pass the licensing test, but can they sell real estate?

Unfortunately way too many agents fail -

- between 75% and 90% agents in their first year. All that time and effort gone to waste

They fail because they don’t have a plan or the right training, or because they are afraid to ask for help. They fail because they don’t value their time, neither does the consumer. Many just give up because they run out of money.

It really does not need be that way …

… with sensible advice, those who can learn and adapt will succeed, where too many others have failed in the past.

So we wrote a special 34 page eBook -

“I got my real estate license, now what?”
A Plan for Fast Track real estate career success PLUS an accompanying 10 page workbook to bring it all together.

And we are giving it to you for FREE -

It’s a plan that works, a plan that guides agents step by step. Some of the highlights you will learn in the eBook:

• Why every newbie needs a good Mentor
• How to easily qualify your next potential client
• Dirty industry secrets a Broker won’t tell a rookie
• Working your sphere of influence and Facebook friends
• The easiest and lasting way to build a funnel of referrals

The eBook also stands up well as a refresher course for more seasoned professionals, those that might have lost their way. You can read a sample chapter at the bottom of the page.

Oh and BTW, you are going to save a whole load of time and stress, by having a plan that will guide you, step by careful step, to success!

Real Estate sales have huge income potential for those that do succeed. Many of those in the top 10% of the industry are earning well into the six figures – enjoying the American dream, no matter what the market is doing.

It’s really OK if your sales skills don’t come naturally, they can be learned, behavior can be adapted and with the right plan you have a real chance of success.

But it’s way too easy for rookies to fall by the wayside – some getting into silly bad habits like sleeping in, long lunches or “working by the pool” …

So, please don’t waste another moment thinking – sign up here for access to your free copy:
 

Need more information?

The 34 page eBook covers the whole spectrum of the tools for success:

A reality check

• Why do 75% of Realtors fail in their first year?

• An appreciation of a successful agent

• Assessing aptitude for a career in real estate

• Personality profiling for real estate agent

• Dirty industry secrets a Broker won’t tell a rookie

• Another unpalatable truth – the 10-90 rule

When to get help

• Seek out a mentor and asking for help

• Qualify every potential client

Choosing your market

• The very first step to success is creating a “niche

• You should know who your potential clients are

 Become that expert

• Do your homework and research your market

• Getting to know the inventor

 Plan to Succeed

• Now is the time to create your written Marketing Plan

• Budgeting and targeting for success

 Optimizing Online

• Creating your online presence and Facebook page

• Content Marketing and sharing your knowledge

• Writing a consumer focused Realtor bio or “About Me”

 Launch yourself

• Work your sphere of influence and Facebook friends

• Meeting the locals

• Your ongoing plan and implementation

 How to earn quality referrals

• Leave a lasting impression of brilliant execution

Where to go from here …

• Links to more resources

Read a sample chapter –

 

If you cannot see the PDF below you can download it here: 

 

Not Signed up yet? Get your free copy:

December 13th 1982 -

I remember the date well – that was the day I opened my first real estate office in Ruislip Manor, Middlesex, England.

My recent purchase of MS Office 2010 made me realize that software has actually come full circle for me.

I discovered a feature I hadn’t seen in years – the ability to  change case on the fly.

If you make a mistake – like type everything in upper case you can change it in just a couple of clicks instead of having to retype the whole mistake. Now maybe there have been other programs that had this option, but I haven’t seen them.

So here is the interesting part …

Before the office opened in late 1982 I made the radical  decision to run without a secretary.  A new fanged computer and printer was to take her place, even though I had never actually owned, let alone used one. But which to choose?

The choice at the time was between the Apple 2 machine similar to the one on the right and an IBM clone, both running text based programs – the mouse was yet to be available. Both also incorporated two 5 1/4″ floppy drives. (Hard drives were not available for a couple more years.)

Basically the software program ran in the “A” drive and the data was saved to the “B” drive.  I remember lots of drive swapping going on during the day!

The  Apple demo did not go well, the sales guy completely fluffed the demonstration.

On the other hand the IBM clone guy demonstrated a word processing program that would give you a lesson on how to use it and incorporated the case change ability that intrigued a 2 fingered typer like me!

He also demonstrated a spreadsheet program called Super Calc – here is an interesting review from 1985 in the Chicago Tribune.

The machine on the left is very similar to the IBM clone that I bought back in the day. It came equipped with 128k of internal memory – lol.

The computer was teamed up with a wide carriage daisy wheel printer so I could run spreadsheet reports as well as print letters that looked as though they had been typed.

The heart of the system was an interchangeable metal or plastic “daisy wheel”.

Different typefaces and sizes could be used by replacing the daisy wheel.

Here is a daisy wheel with each character on it’s own petal:

It was actually almost impossible to tell that the correspondence had not been typed manually. This was important because I wasn’t about to yell from the rooftops that I had disenfranchised a potential employee. I didn’t think that would go down well with the client base of the neighborhood I was working in.

At the time the photocopier had only just become viable in small offices and fax machines would not reach mass adoption for another 6 or 8 years.

The main reason to run a computer rather than a secretary, was so I could employ not one but two sales people. This was a pretty radical at the time and it wasn’t until later that friends would described me as brave

I taught myself how to program the spreadsheet to auto calculate a 12 month cash flow projection. Here is what a DOS spreadsheet looked like (this is Lotus 123 – very similar) before Apple and Microsoft developed their mice driven GUI’s, looks pretty quirky now:

That cash projection and a bunch of hard work helped to turn a profit within 6 months -  we never looked back after that. We went on to open 4 more offices over the next 5 years using exactly the same formula.

But towards the end I was buying Apricot Machines that came with a hard drive and 3 1/4″ floppies.

My investment for the first computer was 2,500 British pounds and 1,500 for the printer, plus software and disks.

In today’s terms that would be a staggering $15,000 …

… so maybe looking back on it, I was just a little brave after all ….

Here is the office on Victoria Road, Ruislip Manor – just up from the underground tube station:

Ruislip Manor (Marked A) in the outskirts, North West of Central London.

A typical terraced “Manor House” sold for around 25,000 UK pounds -
around $40,000 in 1982

A newspaper article celebrating our first year anniversary:

That’s me second from the left, looking a LOT younger …