The top producing real estate professionals are always looking for an edge. They are often voracious readers of the leading blogs such as Future of Real Estate Marketing, participating in online communities such as ActiveRain, and attending industry conferences such as Inman Real Estate Connect. We wanted to share with our community that an exciting, new Real Estate Technology conference, REtech South, is happening next week in Atlanta, GA.

Brad Nix, Maxsell Real Estate, is co-hosting the event on March 27, 2008 at the Hilton Atlanta Northeast. I am especially impressed with the top speakers such as Pat Kitano and Kevin Boer that will be participating in this inaugural event. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Brad Nix for the invaluable feedback on our service and the Real Estate Industry in general that he has provided us over the last year.

So what in the world is a Blog Carnival? Basically is a type of blog event, dedicated to a particular topic, that comes out weekly (or monthly) that tries to summarize the best blog posts that week on that subject. In the past, we have been a contributor to the the Carnival of Real Estate, this is a real estate specific carnival aimed at bringing together the best real estate bloggers from around the country (and world). This week, vFlyer has the honor of hosting the 62nd edition of the Carnival of Real Estate on our blog!

Determining the best posts of the week is no easy task as my experience judging Project Blogger taught me, and guidelines aren’t always very helpful. First of all, you get a bucket load of submissions (30+) that really span a broad range of topics - so two factors tend to jump out at you - overall quality and area of interest. What was interesting about the posts I read was that they pretty much fell into one of nine comprehensive areas of interest (I felt too limited by the carnival’s 3 default categories), so decided to highlight what I thought were some of the best posts along those lines:

	Big Picture: Michael Price’s post Real Estate and The Social Network Effect was my favorite. This big picture pieces does a great job of examining how the real estate social networking landscape is evolving in light of recent development in the space. If you haven’t been keeping up with has been going on, you should read this piece.
	Technology: Larry Lohrman presents Photo Manipulation - Where Do You Draw The Line? Technology has always been a favorite topic area of mine, and Larry touches on a important and controversial trend that needs addressing. Technology is great, but too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.
	Hints and Tips: We all like hints, tips and how-to’s. The Silicon Valley Blogger presents Rent vs Buy A House: How To Evaluate Your Options which revisits the age-old question of renting vs buying, in the context of today’s economy. I also thought that Morgan Brown post titled 5 Things to Do Right Now if Your ARM is Going to Reset Soon was very applicable, given what is happening in the sub prime real estate market.
	News and Opinion: We all have our opinions, and Shailesh Ghimire definitely expresses his in Suze Orman’s Credit Advice Falls Flat. I also liked Matthew Paulson’s take on Why the Real Estate Market Slowdown is great for Consumers.
	Finances and Investing: Many times real estate is a numbers game and John Crenshaw does a good job of showing us the math when it comes to Pay Off Mortgage, Lose Tax Deduction? Honorable mention goes to John Barker’s call to action in FHA Bans Gift Down Payment Assistance Programs.
	Trend Watch: Trends, trends, trends. It seems everyone these days is trend spotter. Raymond of the Money Blue Book exposes some of The National Association of Realtor’s Wacky Predictions in his post.
	Humor: We all need a little humor and Cindy Lin’s post What Britney Spears Taught Me About Staging to Sell A Home shares some great insight with some funny, yet applicable, references to pop diva Britney Spears. I am sure you’ll love the photos!
	Regional Outlook: I had to choose from several great regional real estate outlook posts. In this category, I thoughts that Toby Boyce provided a fairly comprehensive look at what is going on in Downtown Delaware in this post Q&A: What is Happening to Downtown Delaware Ohio? Denny Oh’s look at the San Diego market is also worth checking out.
	International: The Carnival or Real Estate tries to cast a global net on real estate blogging, so I thought it was appropriate to include an international entry - Owning a condo in Thailand by Adam Bryan-Brown that makes a case for owning real estate in Thailand!
	My overall favorite (aka the winner) was Michael Price’s post on Real Estate and The Social Network Effect. Being an idea guy myself, I have a confessed weakness for big picture pieces. Overall the quality of the posts was great and as I have explained before the process of judging is always a subjective one - in my book, anyone who tries is a winner!

Last Monday (July 30) at Lulu’s Restaurant in San Francisco, CA, on the eve of the Real Estate Connect show, a small group of us had another informal Real Estate 2.0 Dinner. We had the first of these dinners in February of this year, and I thought it would be a good idea to hold another dinner with folks in town for conference.

In attendance were Jared Morgenstern, one of the folks responsible for Facebook’s marketplace, Keith Teare – the co-founder and CEO of Edgeio, Joel Burslem – who is responsible for social media marketing at Inman News and brains behind the Future of Real Estate Marketing, Michael Yang – the General Manager of Yahoo! Real Estate and Erik Hersman – VP of Marketing at eppraisal.com and editor of one of my favorite blogs Realty Thoughts and of course myself! We all had a great time (thanks Erik for the photo) and it was good catching up with folks and making some new contacts. Special thanks go to Keith Teare who decided to pick up our entire tab! I have known Keith since 1997 and have always appreciated his vision and generosity – Kudos to Edgeio!

Technorati Tags: ConnectSF, vFlyerEdgeioFacebookYahooRealEstate

As I mentioned in my previous posts, both Aaron and myself had the opportunity to speak on two very interesting panels at the Inman’s Bloggers Connect Show. I spoke on the Pump Up the Volume with Widgets, Blidgets and Other Doo-Dads panel at 1.15pm on Wednesday. Also on the panel were Matt Dunlap – CTO of Realivent Corporation, Konstantin Guericke – CEO of Jaxtr and previously co-founder of Linkedin, and Byrne Reese – Product Manager for Movable Type at Six Apart. Joel Burslem of Inman News did a great job moderating the panel. You can find a high level summary of my key points in my post titled: Widgets, Blogs and Online Sellers.

Aaron spoke earlier in the day at 8am on the panel New Technologies to Enhance your Website: APIs, Widgets and More. Also on the panel were Chris McKeever – Strategic Architect for the Center for REALTOR® Technology, Robbie Paplin – CEO of Caffeinated Software and Damian Scott – President, Eppraisal.com. The panel was moderated by Ilyce Glink – President of ThinkGlink, Inc.

Other Bloggers Connect Related Posts:

• vFlyer Announces Domain Plus (Single Property Site Service) at Bloggers Connect
• vFlyer Named Most Innovative Service of the Year by Inman News
• Panel Speaking Points: Widgets, Blogging and Online Sellers
• vFlyer at Bloggers Connect
• Inman Innovator Awards 2007: vFlyer named Finalist
• vFlyer to Speak at Real Estate Connect

Technorati Tags: ConnectSF

Earlier this week, we announced Domain Plus, a new service coming next week (August 8th) that enables vFlyer subscribers to find, purchase and host Single Property Websites without leaving the vFlyer site!With Domain Plus, subscribers can purchase and attach any number of available domain names to their flyers (micro-site) or galleries!

One of the latest marketing strategies used by agents and brokers is to buy domains for their listings and map them to a Single Property Website. Agents find that clients love this. They also find that the site becomes a focal point for their online marketing for this listing.

Single Property Sites
There has been a lot of interest and discussion on the topic of Single Property Websites recently. Personally, I prefer the term Custom and Vanity Domains, because I think it more accurately describes the activity, but regardless of which term you use, the idea is similar: Using the address of a property as its primary URL for that listing – so a listing at 450 Crestview Ave in San Carlos, CA would have a domain like: www.450crestview.com

Over the weekend, I will shed more light on the pros, cons and misconceptions on Single Property Sites. I think they are a great marketing tool that Realtors can use to differentiate especially high-end properties and I will tell you how and why.

Cost Effective Solution
Competing offerings range from $49–$99/listing for 5 listings which comes out to $246-$496. With vFlyer, 5 domains (at $9.95/domain) plus a vFlyer Starter annual subscription (at $99.50/year) comes out to only $149.25 – a 30% to 60% savings! For those that have more than 5 listings, the savings are even greater.

Positive Market Response
Our announcement has been greeted very positively by market leaders. Mike Borland of the Kelsey Group, a leading strategic research firm, applauds the move and says:

Vivek Puri of the StartupSquad also agrees and adds:

More on Domain Plus: Domain Plus Resources and Information

A couple of minutes ago, registration on our site really picked up! What generally is a slow day (Friday) suddenly was looking like the best day of the week! Aaron, my co-founder, called me to try and figure out why. We were both at Blog Connect this week but were back in the office and on the road getting ready for the release of Domain Plus, our domain hosting and single property site services coming out next week!

After a little bit of searching we found out that Inman News has just selected us as the Most Innovative Web Service of the year, along with a host of other great companies! We would like to thank the folks at Inman News for this distinction and for recognizing our efforts to provide a cost-effective, innovative and robust world-class marketing and distribution platform for real estate professionals and online sellers! We also thank our many users for their support! Inman News writes:

The complete list of winners included:

• Innovator of the Year: The craigslist community
• Most Innovative Brokerage or Franchise: Coldwell Banker
• Most Innovative Blog: Mortgage Fraud Blog
• Most Innovative Web Service: vFlyer
• Most Innovative Technology: AltosCharts widget
• Most Innovative Media Site: ActiveRain

We would like to congratulate the other winners, especially ActiveRain, which is one of the greatest real estates communities around, our friends at Altos Research and my old friend Craig Newmark at Craigslist. We would also recognize the other nominees we know, who in their own right are very deserving companies – 3 Oceans Real Estate, Real Estate Tomato, Transparent Real Estate, Trulia and Zillow to name a few!

Technorati Tag: ConnectSF

Today, Bloggers from across the US are gathering in San Francisco to be a part of InmanNews’ Blogger Connect – a two-day real estate blogging networking event. The event kicked off to a great start! Aaron spoke this morning at 8am on the New Technologies to Enhance your Website: APIs, Widgets and More panel to packed room of bloggers. I am speaking this afternoon at 1:15pm on the Pump Up the Volume with Widgets, Blidgets and Other Doo-Dads panel. If there are any vFlyer users are at show, please feel free to stop by and say hi – we always like to meet and catch up with our users! I will try and give you an update later on in the week on some of the goings on this week at Bloggers Connect.

Earlier this week I spoke on a panel on Media 2.0 at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. The panel focused on how Web 2.0 was transforming media companies was moderated by Forrester Research’ s Charlene Li. I was only there for the day but Realty Thoughts’ Erik Hersman, who always has great insight, summarized some of his thoughts on the conference in his blog post “Web 2.0 in Real Estate”.

The list of speakers for InmanNew’s Real Estate Connect SF 2007 conference have just been posted. Both Oliver and myself are slated to speak at the conference. I am speaking on August 1 at 8am in the morning: 

Wednesday, August 1, 8:00 a.m. – 8:45 a.m.
New Technologies to Enhance your Website: APIs, Widgets and More

and Oliver will be speaking on the same day at 1pm:

Wednesday, August 1, 1:00 p.m. - 1:45 p.m.
Pump Up the Volume with Widgets, Blidgets and Other Doo-Dads

If you are going to be at the show, be sure to stop by and say hi. We always love to meet with and hear from our customers!

This week was an especially busy one for us at vFlyer. The entire team was scurrying to put finishing touches on our upcoming new release - which is just around the corner, we also got invited to a number of early stage company technology events including the Red Herring 100 Celebration Cocktail at the Crown Plaza in Palo Alto on Monday, as well as Dow Jones WebVentures in San Mateo on Tuesday. We had to good fortune of running into into many of our friends and partners at both events. At the Red Herring event I ran into Pete Flint of Trulia and Craig Donato of Oodle, two of vFlyer partners as well as John Helm of MyNewPlace. At the Dow Jones event we caught up with Keith Teare of Edgeio, another great vFlyer partner, as well as Ed Anuff of WidgetBox who was presenting at the show.

I was also invited to speak on a panel (Media 2.0: How Web 2.0 is Transforming Traditional Media) at the upcoming Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco (April 15–18). The panel, which is moderated by Charlene Li (Forrester Research) also includes Gabe Rivera of TechMeme, Ted Shelton of The Personal Bee, and Rich Skrenta of Topix. I invite all of our vFlyer customers, fans or friends to stop by and say hi if you are going to be at the show.

On a very rainy evening at Mistrals in Redwood Shores, California, a group of us gathered for the first Real Estate 2.1 dinner – a casual event I organized for partners, fellow bloggers and other friends of the company to get together. Among other things, we discussed the real estate business, discussed emerging trends and make some interesting predictions for 2007.

The evening had its share of Freudian slips, the best was probably when Kevin Boer asked yours truly if my digital camera had “Redfin” reduction – a feature many realtors would probably pay for! Here are some of the predictions dinner guests made and their favorite movies (the trivia question for the dinner):

Real Estate Predictions for 2007

Kevin Boer, 3 Oceans Real Estate Favorite Movie: The Shawshank Redemption Prediction: While Google will buy Zillow, it will not be this year

Kevin Laws, Co-founder and COO, Vast.com Favorite Movie: Princess Bride Prediction: Kevin Boer will have a good year

Aaron Sperling, Co-founder and CEO, vFlyer Favorite Movie: Stripes Predication: A dozen new real estate sites will spring up giving vFlyer 12 more marketplaces to distribute to!

Pat Kitano, Transparent Real Estate Favorite Movie: Any movie by Martin Scorcese Prediction: Everyone at the table will become a real estate pundit

Oliver Muoto, Co-founder and VP Bus Dev, vFlyer Favorite Movie: The Matrix Predication: Mashups will become mainstream!

Travis Chow, Founder and CEO, Neighboroo Favorite Movie: Shrek Predication: “Real Estate Control Center” dashboards will simplify real estate searches!

Pete Flint, Co-founder and CEO, Trulia Favorite Movie: Austin Powers Prediction: Trulia will finally get out of beta!

Michael Adelberg, Strategic Partner Development Manager, Google Favorite Movie: Heathers Prediction: More people will use the Internet in 2007 to search for real estate than they did in 2006 (updated)

Vote on the prediction you think is most likely

Some Clips From Dinner:

    
Pictures on Flickr    

    

We are having 3 focus groups in February to better understand how customers (and prospective customers) are using our product and what new features they would like to see. We regularly have these focus group to keep in touch with the marketplace and enhance our product offerings. The 3 focus groups in February will center around

• Auto Dealers and Dealerships
• eBay Power Sellers
• Commercial Real Estate Professionals

If you (or someone you know) would like to take part in one of our focus group, let us know at blog@vflyer.com. Participants usually get a free lunch (or dinner) and an honorarium or service discount.

We announced our subscription-based service in New York at Inman’s Real Estate Connect show. As a silver sponsor of the event we had the opportunity to meet with number of existing vFlyer customers and fans who stopped by the booth as well as fellow blogger and press. Thanks for stopping by!