There has been quite the discussion about the recent comments made by the bosses at KW, and Notorious Rob has been deciphering the meanings and intentions. This is the first installment, and the 69 comments from real estate people reveal the intensity of the debate:
http://www.notorious-rob.com/2018/02/in-which-keller-williams-completely-confuses-me/
Rob did his followup here, and at least the conversation continues. The real estate industry doesn’t have a main spokesman or authority, so we are piecing this together across the internet:
The traditional brokerages are too spread out and have no thoughts of mounting a concerted effort to combat the garbage you hear advertised by the disrupters, so the home-selling business will go where it goes.
From what I could glean, he was heckling the deep pocket dudes, and he made some good points, particularly how late these guys are arriving to the game. Where were they when Zillow was just gaining their sea legs? That was the time to get competitive, ruthless, and cocky. The reason Zillow exists is because Facebook and others were too busy to pay zillow upstarts much mind. Zillow was just an outlier, below the radar of Facebook’s, or whomever’s broader goals.
Strategically, the new boys should look to specifically service a small exclusive market, achieve success in that market, which gives them some social cache, then spread out a little at a time.
That’s how Facebook essentially closed down MySpace. They were exclusive to Harvard students. Then Harvard professors, then Harvard alumni, then guests invited by alumni, which is about the time I heard of it.
My initial reaction was “thank god. A professional environment sans the trailer trash riff raff, and general chaos inevitably generated by the idiot teeming masses. Soon, I can ignore MySpace altogether.” Then Facebook decided to become the AOL of the millennial generation. That’s all they are, about now.. AOL with superior algorithms, and is now the center-stage tragic social sh~tshow of our time. Just like AOL was in their time. AOL used to be considered invincible. Now they’re embarrassing, even though Facebook is roughly the same hot mess. Their time to be an embarrassment is probably coming, if not anti-monopoly legislation.
Facebook won’t be innovating much in social media, since there’s not a lot of great insights or judgements that can be made in that marketplace by a guy with aspergers. All they’ll be up in the future to is making specific apologies for aspergery choices.
If you service a tight, exclusive qualified market, with quality service, and succeed, like early Facebook, you can branch out to service those still stuck in the current morass, who are desperate for what you offer. If you scatter out from the get-go, or service anyone with a down payment and a pulse, you’ll get hosed.
Facebook virtually ignored MySpace, and played their own game to a specific membership while MySpace exhausted itself trying to please professionals, as well as Cousin Deeter stuck in a Mississippi trailer park with his animated gif collection.
Don’t be like MySpace.