We've created a Social Media Training Center for Active Rain members that provides continually updated social media education. You can see details at my Active Rain blog.

Special offer:



If you're going to Inman's Real Estate Connect NYC January 13-15, please register at http://www.inman.com/conferences/real-estate-connect-new-york-city-2010/register. In the discount code box, add "Domus" and you'll receive one year subscription to the Social Media Training Center. Let us know you did that (@pkitano, comment here, email) and we'll register you in the Active Rain Social Media Training Center.

About Social Media Training Centers

We developed a Social Media Training Center product that we offer to Associations of Realtors and Chambers of Commerce for their members. One example is at Oklahoma City Metro Association. We're launching Training Centers with Boards and Chambers nationwide, with the California Association of Mortgage Brokers and several in the SF BayArea slated for early December. We're fulfilling a void by providing an agenda-free product that REALTORS are now demanding, even in Oklahoma!

Pew Internet research says 49% of internet users are on social networks. 25% of total US pageviews are now concentrated on Facebook alone.

Twitter Lists are live now. Apparently only a certain percentage of Twitterers can see and build lists.

In real estate, everybody knows how important it is to be the first to pick up the phone. That good impression of the quick callback is simply an indication of service. So you wouldn't try to schedule a return phone call in one month, right?

People still schedule calls and meetings in half hour time slots a month in advance. In pre-Twitter days, perhaps scheduling a month in advance may have attached some kind of importance to the meeting, and implied that there was achievement on getting onto an A-lister's busy schedule.

Now, it's almost a sign of disrespect. As in "I can tweet with you, but are you kidding when you say we need to schedule our call or meeting on November 14?"

Warren Buffett is rumored to set up appointments 24 hours in advance. I'm busy, but my favorite mode of phone communication is simply finding out that somebody I need to speak with is online, and then prompting: "Hey, have 5 minutes?". This is efficient because everybody has some downtime throughout their day, and it's refreshing to have impromptu conversations. (I like Jon Washburn at Active Rain, who does that...)

In fact, try it on me... if I'm available, I'll take 5 minutes to talk with you.

Accessibility is service!

The Bears who throughout the stock market rally starting in March continually cautioned on the "double dip" are now saying they were really bulls all along.

I worked in the South Tower Floor 86 of the World Trade Centers from 1996-1998. All the every day mundane memories of my time there - walking from the Lexington line WTC station up through the underground concourse, past the Chas Schwab offices and up the fast elevators (sometimes they would suddenly stop midway and head back the opposite direction, which folklore blamed as the consequence of the 1993 garage bombing) - suddenly became etched into my brain after 9/11. I sometimes search for videos of the WTC neighborhood like it was a Facebook friend just to see what I remember. It's too bad nobody was bored enough to video the concourse like Google does on streets.



This is a video that matches my memories; it's only worth viewing if you're like me and enjoy the memories of a place you know well. My (then) two year old son would play around the globe fountain, he loved the water. That fountain looks stark and minimalist because that plaza between the two buildings really didn't have anything in it. It was boring, but now I miss it.

We're delighted that our Breaking News Network is one of the event sponsors of 140 | The Twitter Conference in Los Angeles on September 22-23.The Parnassus Group (we like this friendly group a lot) has lined up a Hollywood-inspired roster of speakers that should provide a lot of personality for a tech conference.

We enjoyed the first 140 in Mountain View last May, but thought the crowd was too social-media-centric. I noted that in a room of 300, only two of us represented real estate. We want to see all kinds of industry and small business participating at 140. Twitter and Twitter-based applications offer practical solutions to business development, and it's usually the people in business - real estate, retail, entertainment, hospitality, advertising to name a few - who figure all this out.

As event sponsors, we're offering a discount code for registration at 140: type in 140LAPK. Be sure to get registered by September 6, after that the price jumps.

The problem with financial analysts predicting extreme results, whether it was NAR economist David Lereah suggesting the housing market bottoming every few months between 2006-2008, or pessimists like Dan Dieghan on CNBC saying markets will crash 25%-50% a couple of weeks ago, is they can't change their stripes. If a pundit is saying the current vapid state of the economy can't sustain the level of the stock market in April, it's hard to call to suddenly say, it's time to buy, without appearing hypocritical, or worse, dead wrong.

The bear market rally since March, including the surprising July segment, has defied the doomers' predictions that the market has hit the wall with each down day (Google "Art Cashin pullback" and then "Art Cashin wrong" to see how many times Cashin has chirped). Sure, that downturn will inevitably arrive, but an average investor following the doomer pundits to stay in cash would have missed this rally.

Doomers just aren't as credible any more because they can't admit their predictions, once so true in 2007-8, have been so off this year.