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Ok… so I’m taking some liberties with that claim, but if I could extrapolate our performance over the last 60 days (we signed up over 500 California Agents) to the rest of the US, we would have signed up 25,000 agents. Not bad for our little soft launch?

Actually the numbers are better than that, but our corporate clients asked us not to include their agent feeds in that number. So… we won’t

I’m very excited we are now putting together our educational program to help agents use Agent Scoreboard to cultivate feedback and grow their business, I’m anticipating starting the first webinars the second week in November. If you’ve signed up you’ll get an invitation this week.

I can’t tell you how weird it is to be posting again. It almost feels good. I’ve been so busy trying to keep up with the operations of the Scoreboard that posting on this blog was almost impossible.

I take my hat off to those the guys that blog everyday and still run their business, you guys are machines.

Thanks so much for all our fans and agents that have signed up! Its great to work with you.

If your a California real estate agent or broker and would like to receive an exclusive invitation to the Agent Scoreboard Founder’s Club, with gets you

• Our monthly newsletter
• Invites to our local events
• “How-To” webinars

 Create your FREE Agent Scoreboard profile before 8/31, and get your invitation to the Founder’s Club, and you’ll also receive additional points toward your next Agent Scoreboard Skill Level.

Use the following link to sign up or claim your account:
http://www.agentscoreboard.com/register/a

… found out that the world is indeed flat
… didn’t twitter at all
… learned that people that live near each other will create these things called “communities” (ka-mun-i-tees) because, now the technology exists
…got yelled at by Glenn Kelmen, because I called his company a “discounter”, although
Glenn remembers the conversation differently.
…signed a deal with one of the top 10 brokerages in the whole United States
…worked out the details of a deal with another top 10 broker. (2 down 8 to go)
…slept only 11 hours
…lost my voice
…met Joe from Sellsius
…didn’t meet Pat from TransparentRE
…couldn’t meet with Kevin from 3 Oceans Real Estate, although we tried
…realized the best way to get attention is to be a hot blogger chick in a room full of men.
…ate sushi every night (wasn’t planned)
…heard that user generated “reviews” were great and pointless in the same session, by the same panelist
…loved talking to agents that both blog and produce, a rare combination
…was told that calling an agent to ask a question is now obsolete, since I can post my question on the internet and it will be answered 20 minutes later, what a relief.
…figured out that Facebook is the new AOL
…couldn’t figure out what Russ Capper was talking about
…didn’t get my Trulia t-shirt (UPDATE: Pete from Trulia, said “it in the mail”, thanks Pete!!)
…made Damon Pace the center of the “New Agent Review” basketball team
…left excited about the future of real estate and in awe of the folks are out there trying to make it happen

Brad… thanks for the opportunity!!

Today we announced that we signed an agreement to provide our tools to one of the largest real estate brokerages in the US, Prudential California Realty. Some say this is in conflict to the interest of the consumer, who is ultimately our client.

Well, I can see how someone could say that, however, the reality is, that Prudential understands that the real estate business is really about customer service and marketing. If their customers get great service, they will talk about it and that will influence others to potentially work with Prudential. Duh!

What’s critical from our perspective is that we start to get the industry and the agents on the ground comfortable with the idea of, not only allowing themselves to be reviewed, but asking to be review, even if they now those reviews may be negative. There is inevitability to online reviews, google, yahoo, yelp, insider pages and 100 other websites allow anonymous reviews of local services. There is no avoiding it. If you don’t get out in front of it your going to find yourself a victim of it. If you’re not asking every client for feedback, you’re going to find only the unhappy leaving feedback. The old adage, “a happy customer tells nobody, a unhappy customer tells everybody”, will never be more true than in an environment where user-generated content is so easily created.

The smart money is embracing it and realizing that having a collection of online reviews may give them a competitive advantage in the marketplace. It tells the consumer, “We care about service, if something is wrong, we’ll make it right!” Ultimately, great companies listen to their customers and strive to maintain a consistently high level of service.

Do you listen to your clients? Do you want them to talk to your potential customers… if not, there is always work at the post office.

It was reported to me by a very reliable source that today the Metropolitan Indianapolis Board of Realtors (MIBOR) fired the first shot in an upcoming battle by many Listings Services to reclaim their listings from the public domain. MIBOR announced in a closed door meeting at its Indianapolis HQ, that it is intending to launch the “Broker Listing Cooperative” or the BLC, a separate listing service available only to its members. The purpose of the BLC is reportedly to “recapture our listings from the public domain”

Broker Listing Cooperative - WHOIS

In fact the use of the term “Broker Listing Cooperative” and its acronym BLC will be tightly controlled. As I understand, only active MIBOR members may use it, and their will be no feeds to external websites, not even to participating brokers. It was stated that this initiative was created with the advice and consent of the National Realtors Association, and that MIBOR will be the first of many AOR’s to enact such measures, as the Associations look to reclaim their data.

The creation of this BLC, is most likely an end-around lawsuits pending against NAR, regarding the so-called anti-competitive use of the MLS and IDX. The reasoning behind this move is reportedly; “The excessive use of the terms MLS and IDX have made them a commodity and subject to claims that the listings are “public domain”, many outside of legitimate real estate professionals have usurped these terms for their own benefit.”

This kind of stuff will only benefit large brokers since they can use their market share to dominate the local online market as they opt out of the IDX feed completely, smaller brokerages and online services will see their data dry up. The small guys are going to have trouble keeping consumer eyeballs, even with nifty tools.

This doesn’t help NAR’s image, especially at this time when the stock market is tumbling on housing and credit fears. I believe this will be seen as protectionist, especially since more and more consumers are looking for transparency, and NAR seems to be tightening its control of the housing data.

DISCLAIMER: I was not at this meeting and have no firsthand knowledge of comments made by MIBOR officials. I will gladly retract any incorrect information.