Move.com, the Real Estate Rock Star formerly known as Homestore.com, and the supplier of NAR's Realtor.com, is up to its old tricks and back in legal hot water. Some Real Estate search providers never learn.
Move made a deal to buy ActiveRain.com (the Real Estate Blog Service), got ActiveRain's account information, then backed out at the last minute. Move.com now offers its own ActiveRain-Like service. Sounds like the kind of behavior that got HomeStore and their executives into felony-strength legal trouble before.
Will the NAR take a stand on Move.com's action? Or will Move.com get away with another general- betray-us action? Does Move.com have any relationship with MoveOn.org? Ugh!
Doesn't Real Estate have enough problems with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice(DOJ)? Do we really need to go and take on the Blogesphere?
Haven't Realtors been compared to used car salesmen too much? Let Move.com run the UsedCarSales.com Website. Why doesn't the NAR turn back the miles on its contract for Realtor.com.
If we're best judged by the company we keep, maybe we should stop hanging out with HomeStore, Cendant and Department of Justice types.
Just because Zillow beat the NAR, Move.com and Realtor.com to blogging and to founding the Blog Carnival of Real Estate (and Zillow is free to post our listings) doesn't mean we have to go beat up on the Real Estate blogging world.
Will our NAR dues and Realtor.com fees go up to pay Move.com's legal fees to fight ActiveRain?
Why doesn't the NAR just:
- Dump Move.com (back out of our 1000+ page contract with them = Move.com Playbook)
- Restart negotiations with Google to run Realtor.com
- Let Google sell relevant ads around all our content
- Let Google set up the National MLS and
- Provide all the services we Realtors need
- FOR FREE?
Give 'em Hell and ActiveRain on their parade.
Adapt Or Die! Happy Searching.
WebHomeUSAblog; The Blog of Real Estate Search Marketing
Interesting line of thought. And what would it cost REALTORS to have Google run your show? Seems to me that would be a pretty penny.
For Free??????? How would that work?- Who would pay- the consumer?
Rebecca D. Levinson-Connect2Agent
Posted by: Rebecca Levinson | October 11, 2007 at 11:27 AM