Real Technology

First day of the rest of my life...

2010-02-26T08:04:00.000-05:00

I woke up yesterday morning and saw Greg Robertson's post on Vendor Alley. I've been a devout follower of Greg's since Vendor Alley started. You know when you're on Vendor Alley you've hit the Big Time. (Oh, I swear that picture was my 1 attempt in 10 years to grow my hair and it will never happen again!!! )

Tons of folks reached out to me, from South Florida to Vancouver, New York to Southern California, Chicago to Dallas. There were Tweets and DMs. I received countless emails congratulating me. Honestly, I was floored by the kindness and support. Yesterday afternoon I found I was also part of Russ Bergeron's emails (if you don't receive his daily updates, get them). Wow, Vendor Alley and Russ!!!

I heard many times "you are the perfect person for this job!" and "they made a great choice." I believe in myself, my children, parents and family believe in me. My friends believe in me. Yesterday I found people I barely know believe in me.

At the end of the day I was on cloud 9. Everyone loves to hear how wonderful they are! I floated into aftercare to pick up my Compact Carrs and my little Pixie looked at me and said, “Mommy, you look horrible. No really....your hair is a mess!” She made me smile. Come back down, Princess, take off the tiara, roll up your sleeves and get to work. There’s a lot to be done, you can do this and you can do it well but it isn’t going to be all Rainbows and Butterflies. Time to pull out the power tools and get something done!

Thanks to everyone who took their personal time to offer support, it means a lot to me.

New Look, New Things

2010-02-24T22:35:00.001-05:00

I changed the look of my blog. I have some new, exciting things happening in my life and wanted this to be my blog, not a company blog. I plan to keep writing what I've been writing but I have a few adventures just around the corner.

Let me know what you think. Oh...and the header image was taken at the Palm Beach Zoo when I went on a field trip a few weeks ago with my daughter, Little Darity aka Ninja Barbie aka Mini Carr. I like it and I made it!

Hope to see ya'll at Clareity next week... I get to do a presentation with my pal Matt Cohen. You know if Matt and I are talking together it's going to be interesting, to say the least!

Alphabet Soup

2010-01-29T11:15:00.003-05:00

My pal Austin Smith at Goomzee posted a link this morning to his blog. The subject: Alphabet soup - what the #@$% do all those real estate acronymns mean?!?! I had to check it out right away.

I remember coming into the biz and not knowing what the hell people were saying. My department at RMLS worked on a dictionary for a while, it's just such a loooooooong, boring, painful process.

Good job Austin!!! What a great resource. I already passed it on to some of my peeps.

Leveling the Playing Field

2010-01-15T11:28:00.003-05:00

I've been reading tweets this morning from Inman Connect in New York #ICNY. Mostly I've been interested on the RPR discussions.

Everyone is (once again) talking about leveling the playing field. Ugh. That just gets me all fired up. Leveling the playing field. Bah! RPR providing the same reports and tools to all Realtors does not make all Realtors level. Data is great and is an integral part of the real estate transaction but there is so much more to buying and selling a home!

When the market in Florida was super hot we were seeing Fee-For-Service, Flat Rate and other non-traditional business models opening up all over the place. I wasn't really considering selling my home but I looked at some of the services available to me if I did want to sell. Remember, I love statistics and analytics. I love crunching data. I would bet I can get a better idea of market trends in my area than most agents. It's what I do. If the question is only pricing my house right, I wouldn't need any help. I could price my house, pay someone to add it to the MLS then hire a real estate attorney to represent me at closing. Quick, easy and painless? No way.

There is so much more that a good real estate professional brings to the table other than reports. Things like staging, curb appeal, proper marketing channels, open houses on the seller side. Then there's little Susie's ballet classes, neighborhood vibe...feelings on the buyer side.

I like to think I know a lot about real estate, especially when it comes to real estate information but I would never dream of buying or selling my home without representation. I know there are disclosures but I don't know what they are. I don't know what's reasonable in negotiations. I can look at average days on market but I don't know, strategically, when to modify my price in order to get the best return in the shortest time. There are tons of things I can not do.

So RPR is providing some cool tools for agents. That's awesome. Leveling the playing field? I dunno. IMO the playing field is not data or reports, the playing field is how a person takes the data and reports, add their own intellectual property (something which can not be managed by a computer) and uses that information to represent a buyer or seller. I don't know what all will shake out of RPR, still too early to tell, but I think the tools they are providing will enable the great agents to shine and the bad ones will continue to just get by.

Congrats to a GREAT dude!

2010-01-11T12:40:00.002-05:00

I'm sure everyone has already read the post on Vendor Alley but I wanted to take a minute and write up my own congratulations to my friend Kurt Von Wasmuth with RMLS in Portland.

I met Kurt for the first time at the Clariety MLS Workshop a few years back. As the night got later and later a few of us tough guys were hanging out in the bar at the hotel. I have lots of great memories from that bar but the night I hung out with Kurt is one of my favorites. If you know Kurt at all you know he's one of the most hilarious people ever. We were hanging with the Tarasoft boys and just laughing and laughing. I'm not even sure what we were talking about but I do remember laughing so much my stomach hurt.

Over the years I've been fortunate enough to cross paths with Kurt at most conferences. We try to make it a point to spend at least a few minutes together and I've always felt honored that he'd take the time for me. We've even had some grown-up conversations, Kurt's business philosophies and his ability to share are a true benefit. I believe Kurt is a wonderful choice for RMLS (the real RMLS) Kurt is the kind of person who makes you want to do well. His personality drives success - not because he's mean and scary but because you want to see him pleased. Through my experience I can truthfully say the folks at RMLS are amazing - they're all very driven, smart and super kind. Kurt makes a wonderful leader for that group.

So congratulations, my friend! I look forward to seeing the great things you and your team do in the future. And...don't forget who your friends were when you were one of us little guys.

Keeping a local database current..

2009-11-19T19:14:00.004-05:00

MLSs ask me all the time how their 3rd party vendors can keep a local database current when they only have access to Active listings. In terms of IDX - how does the 3rd party delete listings which have become Off-Market if they can only query On-Market? Here's my answer...

Let's say Active, IDX listings in your MLS are Status = A.

Have the vendor query ML# - they'll only get listings to which you have given them access, in this example:

WHERE Status = A

We call this a "Reference File". Run that Reference File against the local database. Delete listings in the local database

WHERE My_Database_ML# <> Reference_File_ML#

Finally, run a RETS query for all listings:

WHERE Update_Date > My_Last_Run_Date

The first step will provide a list of all Active ML#s. When that is run against the local database any listing in the local database which is no longer On-Market will be deleted. Doing a SELECT * from the RETS server WHERE Update_Date > My_Last_Run_Date will provide updates for the local database for listings which are still on the market and have been modified since yesterday - or whenever the process was last run.

If anyone has anything better please post.

#NAR09 - San Diego

2009-11-17T17:34:00.009-05:00

I'm still recovering from a crazy cold and from PCSD (Post Convention Stress Disorder) but wanted to get out a few thoughts following NAR09 - San Diego.

RPR: Let's just get this out of the way first - I'm tired of hearing about the RPR. Obviously there are still a million things to be flushed out and we all have a ton of questions. Whatever question you have, someone else asked it last week - or the week before. Will the RPR change the landscape? Probably. Is this the death of the MLS? I don't think so but I do think the MLS business is in great need of a huge evolution. I've been in this business for about 15 years and it hasn't changed much. We went from mainframe systems to fat clients to the innerwebs but that hasn't really changed anything. The whole world around us has changed but we haven't. I say it's time for some change. The RPR may be the change we need and, if we don't step up, may push us out of the way. Either way - it's time for some innovation.

RETS: I missed the Saturday RETS panel facilitated by Mike Wurzer because I was sick but I heard it was a pretty heated event. I heard people were upset that nothing has happened with RETS in 2 years. That's been a topic coming from all different directions for some time now. Here's what I think - the RETS spec has not moved for 2 years, that's true. There isn't a whole lot of "published" RETS advancement. That does not mean we haven't done anything. RESO was formed just 2 years ago. We hired an Executive Director, wrote Bylaws and an IP Policy. We contracted NAR to project manage the development of a Compliance Tool. We worked out our recommendations for the usage of that Compliance Tool. We created some support procedures (thanks CRT for being 1st line support!). We're putting in place a Document Management system to facilitate quick publication of changes to the spec. In my opinion what we have done is put some tools in place which will make forward motion much more efficient in the future. We've built a foundation. The Cove Group put a fire under us to refocus on Standard Names, Data Standards and/or Schema. We're close to publishing Core RETS with Extensions. We have a great start to a Roadmap. We have detailed Goals and Objectives for the future. We're *this close* to wrapping up a ton of little projects. The place we're still not doing so well? Communication. Thanks to the Outreach & Education Workgroup, and specifically Troy Davisson, I think we've got a great plan for revising RETS.org and taking great strides in fixing that issue. I heard from someone that RETS hasn't moved because the vendors aren't doing anything. That's a big load of BS. The vendors have busted their butts in getting the Compliance Tool designed and tested. I've heard it's because NAR has done nothing - that too is a big load of BS. NAR paid for a very expensive and comprehensive Compliance Tool and NAR (CRT) staff has worked to see it published. Again, while it seems nothing has happened I'd say a ton has happened. Don't believe me? Call in on Compliance or Roadmap or Education.

My Favorite New Tool: I was fortunate enough to get a demo of CloudCMA. Disclaimer: I think Dan Woolley and Greg Robertson are brilliant! I loved the clean look of CloudCMA. It follows what the fellas have done with Dwellicious. I won't get in to a salesy discussion - sign up on the site and get info from the source but, I'm telling you, it's cool. Another thing I learned during the demo - suites at the Hard Rock have the shower kind of right in the middle of the room. Pretty interesting.

My Favorite Meeting: Pace Davis (just ask Kurt von Wasmuth...we always use both first and last name for Pace Davis) and I met with Lin and Bob from Hawaii Information Service. We met in Lin's suite during the Florida game. We talked about tons of topics and watched the game. Lin gave us a ton of Hawaiian candy. Our meeting was laid back, comfortable and fun. Lin is very opinionated and articulate in voicing her opinions - those are wonderfully refreshing attributes!

My Favorite Session: Hands-down was The Future of the MLS facilitated by Mike Wurzer. The panelists were all great, the content was timely. Obviously the presentations were revised to include the RPR. Ron Stephan, Matt Cohen, Jim Duncan and Bob Bemis hit across the board on their opinions. I have to say - Bob Bemis was fantastic! His Magic 8 Ball was funny. Oh...and right before the session Bob gave me a check for the money I won in his famous football pool. And for you sports fans out there - my method is very scientific. I choose based on which animal would win in a fight, then what city I'd prefer to visit. If neither of those work I pick my favorite color. I'm up $200 this year, last year it was closer to $600.

My Favorite Dinner: Sunday night I had dinner with some of the Clareity Security folks (Nicole Boxx, Eric Hoglund and Paul Hethmon) and my dear friend Marty Reed from LPS. We started with drinks in the bar at the Marriott then had dinner at Roy's. Thanks Kevin Hughes for suggesting we make reservations! Our conversations ranged from super-duper personal to work to inappropriate. We told secrets about ourselves and pumped each other up. We all laughed so hard our stomachs hurt. I feel very blessed not only to have these folks as my friends but to have been able to spend so much time together!

My Favorite Night Out: After dinner at Roy's Nicole, Paul and I headed out to hook up with some LPS folks to celebrate a birthday. Nicole and Paul didn't last very long but, in true KC style, I did. I don't kiss and tell so I'll keep my comments to this: Johann is marvelous and thanks, Underboy, for defending my honor! The rest of you - thanks for including me! I had a great time, even if I was a bit Greene at the airport!

My Favorite Party: Had to be Tarasoft! Those boys sure know how to do it! I found it amazingly classy that they invited everyone, even their competitors. The venue was amazing, conversations were fabulous and the crowd was varied. I think having a cocktail hour rather than a late-night party is the way to go. And do it in style. Thanks Ray and Jeremy for thinking so highly of me, it means a lot!!!! And Kurt - I can't even think about you without laughing. You are a funny, funny man! I promise to find that video and send it to you.

My Favorite Bridge Activity: On Sunday Pace Davis and I had lunch with some of our RETS IQ customers. We were sad not all could make it but had a great time with our intimate group including Freddy Sarabia, Bill Cole, Adrese Roundtree and Jason Sanchez. I'll get some pics posted on Facebook and Picasa as soon as I have time.

Last but not least...My Favorite Kiss: Was from Wes Wiggins. Wes is tall and he always gives the best snuggly hello kisses in the business!!!

As I write this a lot of the fog is starting to clear. As Rob Overman tweeted - this was a strange one! I think my main take-aways are: I'm tired of the RPR for now and I am damn lucky to know the people I do. Thanks Suzanne Harris and Steve Byrd for offering to take care of me when I was sick! Sorry Pace Davis for giving you my germs.

Remembering New Orleans

2009-11-10T13:07:00.003-05:00

I was curious about the number of anticipated attendees for the annual NAR convention this week in San Diego. I heard unofficially from someone at NAR that it was around 18k. The highest attendee count so far is New Orleans with 25k, although at the time we were hearing 30k. I think 25k to 18k is not a bad drop at all, considering how hard the economy has been.

The NAR conference in New Orleans was right after Katrina. I remember being scared to go, scared of what I'd see. I've lived through a couple smaller hurricanes so I knew that real life was far worse than what you see on the news. Obviously we were not exposed to the hardest hit areas (my mom's best friend Renee' lives in Eastland, MI and she lost everything) but we did see some of it.

If you know me at all you know I talk to everyone. I love meeting new people, hearing their stories. I talked to anyone and everyone who would talk to me during that trip. What I remember the most is how thankful and gracious everyone was to us. From the maids in the hotels to the cab drivers to the other drunken fools out at night. The National Association of Realtors Annual Convention was the first major event in New Orleans after Katrina. They needed us, they needed us to have faith in their ability to rebuild.

So as I'm preparing to pack up and head to San Diego I'm remembering New Orleans. I don't really care if the number was 30k or if it was 25k. We did something good for the city when the city needed us.

As I was in the airport heading home two ladies in front of me were leaving on a business trip. They asked me why I was there. When I told them they both smiled and said, "thank you for coming to our city." No, thank you for setting the example for us and for welcoming us. Just another reason I love what I do.

Fair Housing, Discrimination

2009-11-03T12:24:00.005-05:00

I got into a Twitter conversation this morning with Brian Larson and Marc Davison. It started with a comment about the term "Family Oriented" and kind of got crazy. Ardell DellaLoggia and I sent a few tweets back and forth as well. I sent the following email to Brian (edited slightly) as a means for more dialog since Twitter can be so limiting.

Crazy topic!!!

When I worked at MRIS 10 years ago we changed "Handyman Special" (meaning a house that needs work) to "Fixer-Up" because "handyman" could be seen as discriminating against women and handicapped. I grew up in DC so being politically correct is native to me! Moving to South Florida was a *huge* eye opener.

At RMLS met many times with a Fair Housing attorney for Palm Beach county. She used to attend the RMLS tradeshows, have a booth and also do a session on Fair Housing. What Pam said was basically the fed, state and local gov'ts do not publish a "forbidden" list but they do have the list of protected classes. Some terms are obviously derogatory and are easy to restrict but others are more "code" and it's hard to create a list of words people can't use. RMLS used to publish a list of forbidden words but it got a bit too complicated to check using programming.

The list RMLS had included forbidding the use of any nationality. That didn't work because it's okay to say "Mexican tile" but it is not okay to say "no Mexicans". We were throwing too many false positives. Also, once you define words someone can not use they find others to replace them. I think the practice now is pretty much the context of the statement/remarks. And the stories I hear are more from actual people telling a story than remarks put into the MLS. Discrimination and steering are still out there, they just find sneakier ways of doing it.

Specific to the "family oriented" thing - we had to send a warning to someone once because of that comment. The agent got all worked up because she was referring to a park within the community but I had to explain those comments were seen by the old-schoolers to mean husband, wife and children.

It's great to see the disconnect here, though! If so many of us have to learn the hidden meaning behind some of this stuff it means it isn't something we're used to. Hopefully it'll all be gone at some point and we can say "family oriented" and mean any kind of family, even the unrelated kind. Or we can say "heavenly" and have it interpreted as peaceful, not Christian.

VOW Revisited

2009-07-28T11:38:00.006-04:00

Let me remind those of you who have forgotten - I am not a lawyer. I don't play one on TV. I don't wish to be one. I'm happy with my little real estate semi-geek-girliness. I love the policies, the technologies and the heated arguments about the policies and technologies.

I asked the question yesterday on Twitter about an MLS wrapping IDX and VOW into one big, fat, happy rule of data display. To save myself some time I'm going to do a list of all the players who responded to this conversation and give links to their Twitter accounts:

Here's the crux of the issue at hand for the day: Should (can) an MLS allow a broker to opt out of IDX if they are opting in to VOW?

Mike Wurzer wrote a blog post on his ultra-fab FBS Blog about requiring users to register on real estate websites. Liam also posted something about VOWs to the OnBoard blog a while back. Both blogs are relevant to this post and both are, as usual, awesome. I think very highly of both Mike and Liam (Liam isn't as vocal as Mike and some of the rest of us...if you haven't had a chance to check out his stuff, you should. He's a great guy, witty and very geeky - plus he lives near me and buys me lunch). Also, Rob Haun blogged about VOWs and, of course, there is Brian Larson's kick ass VOW stuff over on his blog.

It seems one of my favorite activities recently has been arguing with Matt Lavallee and I have sworn to him that I'll win this argument. That's a mighty bold statement from me so any support I can get will be financially rewarded, errrr...appreciated.

I am absolutely clear on the fact that a VOW is an online extension of the MLS. A VOW displays all the information which would be presented to a [insert popular term here: Customer, Client, Prospect] of a broker. This includes On and Off market listings, most fields, etc. I'm clear on the fact that if a seller opts out of VOW they can not have their listings on IDX sites such as other broker sites, Realtor.com or Trulia. And I'm not even going to argue at all about the benefits of advertising listings on the innerwebs - come on fellas, we all realize it's in most seller's best interests to get their property seen by everyone!!!

To reiterate the question: Can an MLS allow a broker to withhold a listing from IDX if that listing is part of a VOW?

It seems Mike Wurzer is the only one answering the question. Mike responded on Twitter, seeing the differences in the questions at hand. Here's how I see it:

if IDX_YN = Y, VOW_YN=Y

But...the converse of that is not necessarily true:

if VOW_YN = Y, IDX_YN = Y or IDX_YN = N

(yes, that is PQL -> PrincessQueryLanguage)

In other words...a seller can be opted in to VOW but opt out of IDX. Why would they want this? Who knows. Here's one example I can give: Tiger Woods owns property on Jupiter Island. Jupiter Island is 20 minutes and an entire world away from where I live but I am familiar with very exclusive real estate. Lots of high profile sellers don't even list their properties in the MLS but some do. I imagine if Tiger were selling his Jupiter Island property he wouldn't want that information being throw all over regular websites. I think I heard something when he first bought the property about people camping out in his driveway, people taking pics of other properties close to his just to say they had been somewhere near Tiger. I digress...my point here is I can understand Tiger wanting a potential buyer to have an established relationship (the Registration issue Mike and Liam addressed) with the broker who is acting on their behalf.

Apparently the North Carolina Association of Realtors doesn't see a difference between IDX and VOW. As I understand it, they lump them as INTERNET_DISPLAY_YN and a seller can't say Y to VOW but N to IDX. I don't know where that is defined in the policy from the NAR/DOJ settlement (check Brian Larson's blog again...it's easiest to read and isn't full of as much legal stuff as the actual settlement/policy stuff).

So there are my arguments and my reasoning on why a seller should be able to opt in to VOW and out of IDX. I sincerely hope to get comments about this as I haven't seen many on this specific topic and I find it interesting. And it wouldn't suck if I could get Matt Lavallee to agree with me.

Twitter - Making My World Smaller

2009-06-30T16:46:00.003-04:00

I sometimes have trouble sleeping. I can fall asleep anywhere, any time but staying asleep is sometimes difficult. Lately I've been waking up around 2:00 and staying awake for an hour or so. I typically venture downstairs to let my dog out, grab some water then head back to bed. I check UberTwitter on my Blackberry for any knuckleheadedness or interesting tweets I may have missed. Last night around 2:30 I was reading all the tweets from my favorite tweeps. I've been noticing kind of a trend lately but one particular Retweet (RT) last night truly, honestly warmed my heart.

There are a few people in my work life with whom I have developed a very good, long-term relationship. I have some folks I've met more recently who I value tremendously as allies, friends, go-to people. So last night what I saw was a RT from one of my old-timer friends of a Tweet by someone I've only known for about 2 years but who has become a very big part of my on-line life.

The old-timer (and I say this kind of to annoy him but mostly because he's been with me since the infancy of my career and is still someone I turn to frequently for advice) is Mike DelGaudio, Director Research and Development at MRIS. Mike and I worked together for several years, he was a wonderful mentor. Mike always made time to help me, to offer suggestions, to lend an ear and to always, always make me laugh. Mike and I have kept in touch since I left MRIS and moved to Florida. He always comes to Midyear to see me. When I was taking my Oracle classes a million years ago Mike was very helpful in getting me to understanding procedures and functions. Mike laughed at me during our first Java class when I was completely lost (What the hell is this "duration" crap???) I truly love Mike, he's a keeper!

Last night Mike responded to a tweet by Jeff Isreal, MLS Administrator at the Arkansas Regional MLS. Jeff and I met at the MLXchange User Group meeting in Bar Harbor, Maine two years ago. We hit it off right away. Jeff is someone I speak with about MLS policies, market trends, etc. When Bridge was working on RETS IQ Cheque Jeff was a very valuable resource in the design phases. I am very thankful to know Jeff, to know about his wife and his son. I like to know what they're doing with their VOWs, IDX, RETS.

So Jeff tweeted: Are certain types of VOW's illegal in Arkansas? Stay tuned. Finishing up a little more research. Mike RT'd it then Jeff responded. Without Twitter these guys would probably never meet! They don't go to the same conferences but can be amazing resources to each other. They're wonderful guys, smart, helpful, fun and funny.

All this made me think about my friends who I'm watching get to know each other over Twitter and who are asking, and answering, questions. I've developed a very close relationship with Melissa DelGaudio who is Mike's wife (I remember the first time I met her they were smooching by the elevator after lunch - now they have 2 children together). Melissa now knows Amy Geddes, COO of Clareity Security. Melissa and Amy both have started Tweeting one of the owners of Bridge (and our Lead Developer) Marc Smith. Amy and Melissa are chicks I respect, adore and who make me smile. We have off-line conversations as well but mostly I know what they're doing because of Twitter. Amy and I seem to be all involved with Steve Byrd, VP and CIO of Carolina Multiple Listing Services. Steve is as much of a knucklehead as the rest of us and he also has brilliant ideas, a great sense of humor. I've added to my information network folks from the industry who I've known for years but didn't know well like Matt Lavallee from MLSPIN, Victor Lund from WAV Group.

Then there are the folks I watch closely as they have been a big part of my information network but now I have a whole new means for seeing what they're thinking - folks like Mike Wurzer with FBS, Dan Woolley and Greg Robertson with Dwellicious, Matt Cohen with Clareity Consulting, Keith Garner and Chris McKeever with NAR, David Harris with eNeighborhoods. I've found Kevin Reichard, a dude I've known since elementary school, is in the industry and living just an hour from me. I've met (and absolutely digg) Jay Thompson, The Phoenix Real Estate Guy. And I can't forget Seth Agranov, departed the biz but still offers valid opinions!

I'm sure I'm leaving out a lot of Tweeps from the Real Estate business who I follow very closely and I'm sorry. Mikey D and Bo (don't ask...Jeff won't want you to know): I'm glad you guys found each other, I'd like to think it's a little bit cause of me. You both rock in many ways and I believe you can get something from each other.

I love Twitter. I love seeing the latest blog posts, reading headline news, finding out who is working with whom, market trends. I like knowing what my friends are doing. I really like learning things I didn't know about people which tends to make them a bit less scary, more approachable (yes, I do get shy sometimes).

Big <3 to my Tweeps!!!!!

Facebook doesn't kill privacy, people do...

2009-02-20T10:06:00.002-05:00

I have a friend (to protect his privacy I won’t use his name) who is pretty cool, very smart but is a hater of social media. It isn’t because he doesn’t understand the technology, he’s kind of a nerd like the rest of us. It’s more that he’s concerned with privacy and with people he doesn’t know having access to personal aspects of his life which he’d rather not share. We’ve had many debates about this – I think he’s way, way wrong. Over the last few months I’ve gotten to be pretty tight with a friend of his and we’ve started ganging up on him. We both see a huge value in social networking for our personal and professional lives. Two nights ago I received a text which sent me crashing to the floor. The text was from my friend, he said he set up a Twitter account.

The subject of Facebook came up again. He read articles about the Terms of Service issues Facebook has had this week. If you haven’t been following this closely and if you don’t have a general understanding of Terms of Service and public domain it looks like Facebook announced earlier this week that they could use your information willy-nilly, even when you close your account. I read Mark Zuckerberg’s blog post and I get it. Basically once you post something and share it, regardless of the method you use to share it, it is no longer in your control. It may be something you “own” but you have let the cat out of the bag. It’s similar to email - once you send someone an email it is in their control, not yours anymore. I don’t think what Facebook is doing is all that bad.

One thing I think non-Facebookers don’t realize is you can make everything…everything private. Matt Cohen blogged about Facebook and Real Estate recently. Being who Matt is, his focus was security. All of my information, including photos, are viewable *only* by my friends. When I was discussing this with my friend I pointed out his other friends do not take such precautions. When I log in occasionally there's a message that another mutual friend has been tagged in a photo. Then...low and behold, there's a picture of my friend, complete with his name and comments about him. That's a bit weird for me, it makes me uncomfortable seeing pictures of someone who I know does not agree with the medium. So the friend of a friend of a friend has Privacy Settings where pictures can be viewed by Friends of Friends or My Friends and My Networks which means his privacy has already been compromised without his permission.

I totally understand these concerns, I have the same ones - specifically because I have pictures of my daughters on Facebook. I don't want any freaky crazy to see those. I’ve been contacted by two people recently who I’d prefer know absolutely nothing about my life. Thankfully, my Privacy Settings are such that they can see only minimal information about me. When I received the Friend Requests I simply clicked Ignore and moved on.

In this day and age people are talking about "transparency" and communication. Not only is that the buzz within the gov't but also in industry, particularly real estate. It isn't okay to simply develop a relationship over the phone or email, people don't want that anymore. They want to "feel" you, feel as if they know you. I believe there is a very delicate balance between professional and personal. It's cool to me that technology is changing our society and enabling us to be connected.

I've gotten some great opportunities for work because people can see some aspects of me they wouldn't see just in an email or over the phone. I'm more approachable and more interesting. I’ve gotten closer to people with whom I’ve had a distant professional relationship for years. Several people I know now see me as a mother who has fun with her kids, gets frustrated, doesn't mind posting ugly/dorky pictures of herself. I'm different to them now. One woman in particular who I have known for more than 5 years comes to mind. We had a fine working relationship but didn’t know anything about each other even though we spoke often. Because of Facebook I now know she has a similar life situation to mine, we’ve spoken (via Facebook messages) several times. I think we’ve both gotten something from it.

Facebook keeps me up on what’s happening with my colleagues. It’s another means to find out what events are coming up, who is speaking, what people are working on. Anyone on Facebook or Twitter knows I’ve been trying to write some non-technical technical VOW stuff lately. Facebook told me Amy Geddes is working on a VOW presentation. Amy and I spoke last week about it, she helped me with my work. I wouldn’t have known Amy was doing that without Facebook. Facebook also told me Amy knows how to make apple pie. Since I’ll be at the Clareity MLS Workshop in two weeks and because I love Amy dearly (and Amy knows I can be a horrible whiner) I begged Amy to make another, in exchange for my Chipotle Brownies (of which Amy because aware due to Facebook).

And for the personal stuff - I never talk to my real life friends on the phone. We just aren’t that way. My BFF, Marina, lives 10 minutes from me, she works in the complex where my younger daughter goes to pre-school. My older daughter is in the same elementary school with her daughter and they are BFFs. Her husband is my very good friend. I love her 3 children as if they were my own but I do not ever, ever speak to her. Ever. I know what’s going on in her life, how her kids are. Her son got a new haircut and the baby now has 5 teeth. I got this from Facebook. I also saw the pictures of all of us from New Year’s Eve, the ones I’d never see if there wasn’t a Facebook. I've gotten close to another very good friend of Marina's, Melissa, who lives in Philly. We've only met a handful of times but we're pretty close. She may drive down for the weekend when I go to DC for the RETS meeting in April. I've gotten very close with the wife of a former co-worker with whom I have been friends for more than 10 years. His wife, not he, invited me to a party in MD this weekend (Sorry Melissa - I really can't make it).

There are aspects of my personal life which I am not willing to share on Twitter or Facebook. Some things are very private to me but, for the most part, I enjoy sharing the things that make me happy, frustrated, excited. Someone else usually has a comment to lift my spirits, make me laugh or tell me to quit complaining. It’s a fun way to stay connected and to allow people to see a different side of me and to see a different side of them.

Back to my friend and his privacy issues. I told him privacy can be up to him, he decides what to put up, what to share and with whom to share it. That said, his concern should be more with his friends and his friend's friends than with his own behavior. Facebook doesn’t kill privacy, people do.