UrbanDigs Twitter - Worth A Spot On New Site???
A: Let me know what you guys think of this Twitter thing. When I started talking at the real estate conferences years ago, Twitter started to really gain steam and I questioned why it would succeed. "Micro-blogging", everybody said - the coolest new thing! Now people can see you talk about shaving, dressing, going out for coffee, whatever! My first thought is, r u kidding me? Who the heck cares about that sh*t - don't we all have better things to do with our lives? Now you hear about a mom twittering after their son drowns, celebrities twittering about their lover's passing, athletes twittering about big trades, and marriage proposals. But does this service have a sustainable place in this virtual world? And more importantly, does it have a place on UrbanDigs when the new site launches????
You can follow UrbanDigs on Twitter by clicking here...but do you really care to?
This is what I am grappling with and I'm 50/50 on the worth of this thing. Is this technology just a passing fad or the real deal? Does it deserve a spot on the new UrbanDigs when we launch in 7-8 weeks? If anything, I can probably see myself tweeting (is that the right term?) about more in the field Manhattan real estate situations as they unfold; that may be useful for some readers. Lost deals, monthly production/signed contracts, changing trends, losing a bidding situation to a higher offer, board turndowns, etc..sometimes I find it hard to write discussions once a day when working with as many clients as I do. So does Twitter fill in the gaps when I have no time to blog? Or is it useless, like I first thought 3 years ago when I first learned of the micro-blog service?
Please do share your opinions and any other suggestions of improvements you want to see for the new site! I'm building it for you guys to add transparency to this market, so do speak up!! Thanks!
Posted by anon
Fri Feb 5th, 2010 09:53 AM
i follow you on twitter but i find that i dont really read it that much. my suggestions to improve the site would be
1. new discussion forum, the talk section now is quite weak and there are no date stamps for threads
2. i usually want to email your articles to friends, so a button to email posts will be useful
3. also, i sometimes print your articles and read on subway, a print button also would be nice
4. your charts suck, sorry! but I assume that is the entire purpose of the new site and will be main focal point of upgrades
5. last comments? what if a post from 6 months ago becomes relevant again, how do we restart old discussions?
6. you used to talk about great deals, what happened to that?
7. image of the author, somtimes I forget if its you or Jeff or Toes writing, where is Toes? gone after the bullish post the day before Lehman failed? did we scare her away?
all in all, this site is great and the only one i trust when it comes to real estate markets here. so i will keep reading regardless.
Posted by Davide-NYC
Fri Feb 5th, 2010 09:53 AM
Urbandigs is all about how Macro forces affect Manhattan RE. Twitter is the polar opposite of macro. Right?
I find it useless:
Having any type of data point about Real Estate at an interval smaller than daily (or weekly?) is just pure noise in my opinion.
Twitter will only sully one of the best blogs out there currently.
My $0.02.
Posted by Noah
Fri Feb 5th, 2010 09:56 AM
Davide-nyc - i happen to agree 1000%! Thanks for kind words! Im leaning to get rid of it
Posted by Noah
Fri Feb 5th, 2010 10:00 AM
anon - THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! This is what I need to hear.
I can tell you the new site covers most of your issues: we took care of and implemented #s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7! As far as #6, that was a choice I made because I was warned by sales managers that a licenses salesperson REBNY member can NOT advertise another agents listing without consent. I started to get approvals from brokers but it got too much to maintain.
I guess if you guys really liked that I can do it, as I see great deals, or what I consider good deals out there all the time. But since its subjective, I can see many people out there disagreeing with me and I dont want this site to become a place brokers hate because their listing gets bad press and seller gets pissed at them.
That is my big concern. Thanks for your ideas!
ANY MORE GUYS????
Posted by Dan
Fri Feb 5th, 2010 10:22 AM
Noah,
Love the site. I try to read it as much as possible but sometimes just don't have the time. I think you should use twitter to at least "tweet" your most recent blogs so it reminds me to read them and I can also follow the link from the twitter feed on my phone. I also think your quick thoughts on the market while you were out would be interesting but may be a pain for you.
Thanks!
Dan - nyc
Posted by Jay
Fri Feb 5th, 2010 10:44 AM
I can see Twitter being useful for someone who doesn't want to use an RSS reader/notifier.
Potentially, you could use it as a tease. "Look for my upcoming post about the Fed Beige book!"
Personally, I don't use it (nor would I for either of the above) but that's just me.
Posted by OT
Fri Feb 5th, 2010 11:08 AM
twitter sux
Posted by Noah
Fri Feb 5th, 2010 11:10 AM
glad I asked you guys...tend to agree that there is not a spot for it on new site
Posted by Kevin
Fri Feb 5th, 2010 11:18 AM
I still don't get Twitter. I kind of find it similar to SecondLife, the online "virtual world"- if you remember, about 2-3 years ago, everyone was talking about it and it seemed like every entity out there was setting up some sort of presence there. But I tried it... and it was just terrible. And eventually it did flame out and I don't think it is even operating anymore.
I see twitter in kind of the same way. It does seem to be the hot thing of the moment, but when it comes down to it, there is no substance, and the signal/noise ratio is very, very low.
As an aside, a coworker of mine and I were actually involved in a startup in 2006/7 that had a very similar idea to twitter, but with what we felt was the critical feature of implementing "quality" filters to make sure that your stream had information worth reading. Interestingly, we referred to it as "broadcast based instant messaging" not microblogging. Twitter beat us to market by about 4-6 months, we just assumed they would roll out similar quality features to the ones we had thought up shortly after, and we were having a hard time coming up with a business model to make money, so we threw in the towel. I have no regrets, twitter still hasn't made a dime and I will be surprised if it ever does. This fad will pass.
Posted by Noah
Fri Feb 5th, 2010 11:44 AM
Kevin - thanks for sharing the story of 2nd life and your startup idea that was similar to twitter...never heard of 2ndlife though.
But I do agree about twitter as a fad! Thanks
im leaning to excluding it in new site!
Posted by jason
Fri Feb 5th, 2010 01:48 PM
twitters biggest user is ashton kutcher. please don't go there.
Posted by Noah
Fri Feb 5th, 2010 04:52 PM
nuff said jason! twitter is gone! just needed to hear it from some readers
Posted by Joe Stampone
Fri Feb 5th, 2010 04:56 PM
Noah, I definitely think Twitter should be incorporated into the new site. In the field updates are great, but I think of Twitter as a communication tool - a way to quickly give you're opinion on an article, ask/answer questions, add non-real estate related stuff.
It'll just serve as a way to build community on the site and be more transparent.
Thanks for continually providing great content.
Posted by Noah
Fri Feb 5th, 2010 06:06 PM
well that is the other 50% of the uncertainty I had...but i just dont see it fitting in. dont worry, I set up other places for us to get great discussions going and to see my thoughts on changing real time trends...should achieve the same goal for you guys in terms of what im seeing on a 3-4 weekly basis
thats about as minimal as i like to go before thinking about changing my mind on what to focus on and watch out for.
Posted by winnie
Fri Feb 5th, 2010 10:20 PM
Twitter sucks. I got rid of my account a couple days ago.
Posted by Donald Brennan
Sun Feb 7th, 2010 12:34 AM
Hey Noah - I'm with Joe Stampone on this one. I follow him on Twitter and about 75 other real estate people/entities and news outlets that in the past I would have typically visited their sites directly. By using Twitter I am able to digest significantly more relevant information in a shorter amount of time. I find that I have less and less time to read long form blogs like yours. While they are usually informative (I have referred to them on my own blog here http://bit.ly/8TCEUR and here http://bit.ly/dxCTUu) they are very long and might be better used as a weekly or monthly communication tool.
I thought your addition of Ana was great as her writing style, short and sweet, is still effective in creating a discussion, as evidenced by the number of responses the few posts she has put up here have generated.
Your call that Twitter is a fad is rather contrarian. At the moment it is one of the most valuable and widely used advertising tools that is FREE and is used in force by the generation right behind yours. Maybe that demographic isn't your client base.
Using Twitter and devoting some space on your site to it (I assume as per the graphic posted above) are two different things. At a minimum you should give readers the option to follow you on Twitter and you can have your posts tweeted automatically (Wordpress allows for this), freeing you up from worrying about how to relay a thought you may have in 140 characters or less. Which takes some practice and skill. Not so sure you need to repeat the tweet by displaying it on your home page.
Today, if I come across a site that is new to me and is one that I find informative I will not follow it unless it allows me to via Twitter.
Your quest to provide timely market data that has until now been inaccessible to the market participant is pretty much what Twitter is about. The delivery of information that is real time. Figuring out how to use it effectively is your challenge. Using it in a fashion that would make your mother (euphemistically) happy is propably not the way you should be using it for your business.
Posted by Keith Burkhardt
Mon Feb 8th, 2010 10:50 AM
Ahh Twitter, definitely more sizzle than steak as they say.At first look I thought, like many "what a useless gimmick and waste of time". Now it is part of my line up, another bullet in the chamber as the marketing head at my old record label liked to say. It is certainly easy enough to use, so why not tweet?
Posted by Thisson
Tue Feb 9th, 2010 04:11 PM
I don't use twitter and have no interest.
I am interested in the thoughts that support your analyses, not just the conclusions, and I'd imagine twitter requires the sacrifice of all nuance.
Posted by Ben
Fri Feb 19th, 2010 09:27 AM
I use twitter to announce new blog posts. I works automatically. I don't have to ever log in to twitter. When I make a new blog post, it automatically makes a new tweet. It also post to my Facebook page automatically too. So I can spend more time on the cool stuff, writing the blog, and less on the publication aspects.
Posted by coach handbags
Thu Aug 12th, 2010 09:51 PM
Now you hear about a mom twittering after their son drowns, celebrities twittering about their lover's passing, athletes twittering about big trades, and marriage proposals. But does this service have a sustainable place in this virtual world? And more importantly, does it have a place on UrbanDigs when the new site launches????