Reader Ross expanded on his previous comment:
Responsible web site authors do not copy entire articles word for word without permission. Copying is not authorship. A URL at the bottom of an article is not “prominently displayed.” No publication name, no original author name. I do not hide behind pseudonyms, and I do not engage in childish name calling of people who disagree with me.
Jim, I think you are a stand up guy and do provide valuable information, but your particular practice of copying entire articles into your blog to use as your content is, in my opinion, unethical, unless you obtain permission from the original publication to do so. If you do this, then I sincerely apologize, but also recommend you include some notice of this, “used by permission” or some such. To reproduce a work in entirety without permission, in my opinion, tarnishes your otherwise high level of professionalism.
My response:
I appreciate your willingness to comment. Here’s my side of it.
I am a realtor.
My goal here is to help disseminate information that I think is important to my clients, and potential-clients. I think it is my job to provide a resource that educates people about buying and selling.
I don’t claim to have authored these posts, I just think they are pertinent to the readers and building the education.
Could I include a sentence or two and then link out?
Yes, and usually I only include snippets of the story here – it is rare that I copy a whole article. My goal is to expose the main point in 1-3 paragraphs, add a graph or photo, and link out for the readers who want the full story.
I am also using twitter, which is the easiest format to legally post articles.
But I don’t know how many bubbleinfo readers are frequenting the twitter account. It’s only got 153 followers while the readership here at the blog miraculously stays right around 12,000 unique visitors per month.
Here is the real problem.
I need to provide content to keep an audience, and I don’t have time to author enough posts myself to keep the blog full and engaging.
However, help is on the way.
KK, our oldest, started her final quarter of college this week. Once complete, she will be joining the family enterprise this summer.
She is a very engaging personality, and a born salesperson. When she joins the team, there will be no more shortage of content – instead, we will be fit for reality TV.
If you can grant me some leeway until summer, I’d appreciate it. The market intensity is brutal right now, and I have to stay focused on the business.
If you and others would like to comment on how to improve the bubbleinfo experience, I’d love to hear it. I am going to have at least one guest author contribute occasionally, and I might just go with less content and hope people stick around another three months.
Jim –
Just keep doin’ what you’re doin’
As you said, you generally do not post entire articles. To an average reader like me, it is obvious where the content comes from based on your links and references.
I second Scotto’s comment. I think your attributions to the source are quite clear enough for me. I really don’t understand why someone would take issue with it.
Thanks Scotto and CBMark.
I consider myself your real estate editor. I read the full article, and then post the part that matters most.
Many articles are too long or not very accurate, so I figure we should just get to the point.
ditto the above comments
Your content is very informative. I really like the in-the-trenches videos and narrative. Lots of fun interaction too.
Btw… KK must get her good looks from her mom. She doesn’t look anything like you Jim.
Most of the blogs out there generally take some pre-existing content and comment on it. So I think the idea of posting relevant content from other sources is fine. I do think there might be some room to improve the distinction between quoted text and original content. Most blogs tend to use some kind of shaded box or at least italics to distinguish their commentary from quoted content. I’m not sure what kind software you’re using on this blog but usually people use a blockquote tag to display quoted content.
I.e.
Since the days of Aristotle I wonder how many original thoughts of R.E. Brokers have been worth sharing? Keep sharing whatever turns that light bulb on, JTR. You’ve developed a pretty good sense of what we enjoy & it’s one of the reasons we keep coming back.
Ross seems to be having a bad day. JtR, Keep up the great work.
Ross’ comments read to me like he is making a mountain out of a molehill.
I hate Twitter. Please don’t force me to Twitter if you shut Bubbleinfo down.
I’m surprised life is too short to have to deal with such ****.
Frankly, I’ve always found it abundantly clear that the content of the referenced articles wasn’t yours and that the source of the content was readily available from your content.
More importantly, your content was not the other content, but a continued highlighting of the often dubious practices apparently abounding in RE business landscape.
Keep chugging along JTR, and congrats on successfully getting your daughter through college and still having her willing to join the family business!
JtR – Keep doing what you are doing. It’s clear to everyone when you are posting from another source. Look forward to KK’s contributions.
I’m with (most) everyone else… keep up the good work!
p.s.: Good genes! 🙂
I’m imagining KK and I both having cameras running simultaneously, so the video content should increase.
People will be surprised at her grit – she is tough and street smart. She may not look like me (thankfully) but she’s got the same moxie.
You SHOULD do a reality TV show. Love it!
Jim – keep doing what you’re doing. I agree, Ross must be having a bad day or has much too much time on his hands. Also I’m not into Twitter – hate it. It’s no coincidence that you have 12,000 regulars. “If it ain’t broke – don’t fix it”. (Do I have to give someone credit for that saying?) 🙂
Dude, keep doing exactly what you are doing.
I love everything about bubbleinfo and have been coming back ever since I first heard about you in a featured LA Times article maybe four years ago.
Keep at it, Jim! So very grateful for your website…
PS Your daughter is as beautiful and smart as mine! Hope she has a stellar real estate career just like her dad.
Jim, I have the agree with reader Ross. I don’t like it when you borrow content from other writers or make it difficult for me to know when the thoughts are actually from you. (cause then I don’t know what to believe.)
Jim, you owe no one an apology. Not Ross or anyone else. You do a great job with bubbleinfo.com.
I see no issues with your style of article/link posting. There is no ambiguity or confusion with the ownership or authorship of linked articles.
Keep up the good work, Jim. Keep moving forward with what you do so well. Your blog and videos are a breath of fresh air.
I’m callin BS on this ross guy. He is a troll.
Maybe, but he has a point, and I don’t mind abiding by the rules.
Plus, every single thing I do is scrutinized so closely that I can’t sneeze without somebody having a problem with it. There are people that keep looking here until they find something wrong with JtR, and then go hire an agent that they know nothing about and end up wondering why they got screwed.
I dig the transparency thing though, because it is being forced onto the industry. Once all the slimebags are revealed, I’ll have a real chance to gain some market share.
Ross, thanks for keeping the inter-toobs honest….one blog at a time!!!
Ross reminds me of the “someone is wrong on the internet” meme. Do a Google image search; it’s worth a laugh.
Besides, if D Magazine didn’t bother JtR, why should anyone?
After careful deliberation, I’m going to have to go with Jim the Realtor on this matter, and here’s why…
This blog is no different in theme and execution than when it, and Jim, was featured on Nightline, CNBC, and others. The decision-makers at those outlets are professional, national journalists who routinely, and carefully scrutinize the people they’re featuring.
I believe if the seasoned editors and fact-checkers at Nightline found, out of the literally thousands of real estate trend blogs, that Jim, and his blog, was the best choice to devote an entire segment of their national program, then it’s reasonable to trust their final choice in the matter related the implicit integrity of this blog, over the unqualified, subjective musings of “Ross.”
Yes, I’ve decided this, even though “Ross” posted his full first name in the interest of integrity, and transparency, that he has repeatedly stated he holds so dear.
As an addendum, you may have lost this one, “Ross,” but to me, you’re still “Ross.” The commenter who thinks he see’s stuff. And that’s still something to be proud of in a way.
So I think everybody won here today.
I wouldn’t sweat it Jim… I don’t think anyone who spends any time at all on the net thinks for 1 second that you’re trying to pass off articles as your own. They’re clearly linked as something you found interesting. It’s a pretty common blog strategy to post a link then respond to it. Generating original content is hard! Generating it daily is impossible.
Providing an expert response to crap that is getting published in the papers is interesting, and is worth posting. I like it, and I’ll keep reading, and keep referring my friends to this site to learn before they decide to buy.
Bubbleinfo.com is the Drudge Report of SoCal real estate. It is neither necessary nor important scribe each posting personally. You provide an impressive breadth and depth of knowledge. Your insightful comments help sort through the spin and understand what is relevant (or should be) and even more importantly why it is. You provide a snapshot of an ever changing marketplace. Wonky analytics and endless prose is not what makes this site a valuable resource.
On an aside: I like the legacy building of your company. I hope she negotiated stock options.
The haters will hate….Ross, do you have a Real Estate blog with a lower alexa traffic ranking then Jim? If I would have to guess, that is the first thing that jumps out at me and why your panties are in a bunch over such a minuscule issue.
I don’t think Jim is doing anything wrong whatsoever and it could not be much more in your face clear-cut that he is quoting a article posted elsewhere. Lets use Huffington Post as an example comparison “one of the largest online news companies, according to wiki”. I don’t see Jim doing anything much different than what they do with posting other website’s content on their own site.
Jim is straight outbound linking to these other sites and not using iframe links to show his own url in the address bar, he is clearly using the link as the hyperlink text and not his own text saying Click Here and you have to hover over the hyperlink text to see the real link pointing outbound to another website domain and he is not masking his links using his own domain and redirecting to make it look like his site gets way more traffic then it actually does in traffic logs.
The media social proof alone that Jim has established over the years sets him worlds apart from the majority of other real estate bloggers, not to mention that when he was on a media segment with Nightline how taken back they were on his honesty and the majority of the segment was spent on how unique he was because he was the “brutally honest realtor”! Other blogger realtors will slap up high ranking news media outlets images and try to gain new potential clients by gaining there trust utilizing that media social proof accreditation on a 30 second segment they said a few words on years ago, in this particular case you have a high ranking authority news media outlet spending the majority of their time in their segment going on and on about how brutally honest of a guy Jim is.
Jim is a very rare breed, I think that if you searched the entire country you would have a very hard time counting on one hand how many realtors are as good and Brutally Honest as Jim is and this is from my past dealings without him a recent with him. He is my go to realtor for life, why settle for other hack realtors when you can deal with the real deal…
Jim,
Keep up the good work — i’ve been a reader for many, many years and your honest analysis has benefitted a lot of people. Do your best to let the criticism roll off you when it’s only 5% of the feedback. Gotta play the percentages and keep the 95% happy!
-C
I have been reading for years but rarely post. I think you have a formula that works, Jim. The issue Ross notes is primarily academic and easily solved with a quick informal reference “this taken from” or “see full article at”, etc, etc. Equal to your posts in value for me is reading the follow up comments from the followers. In that vein I do not think you should feel pressure to generate daily content. It seems like the content has increased in the last year while the posts slip down the page quickly without much comment. Maybe less is more in this regard…
It’s obvious to me when you are attributing content, Jim. You pass along very helpful and informative articles. Keep up the great work.
As a guy who does a lot of SEO work, please, please copy my content and provide a link to my site. Please! It’s really important to getting your rankings up. I’ve got customers that pay a lot of money to get links to their site.
You can copy anything I ever write. Just provide a link.
Jim, I have followed your blog for several years. I have always appreciated the outside content and have never confused it as yours. Many of the blogs follow a similar format. Check out Paul Kedrosky and his blog Infectious Greed. Jim, keep up the good work.
Bruce