We are trying to understand why certain MLS systems would want to allow the use of video, with no presenter in front of the camera and no voice overs? Our team has been getting inundated with feedback regarding this very subject, and-before making a judgement-we want to hear from our users/readers what you know about the rules. The whole non-branded video thing makes a slight bit of sense, but I wonder where the logic is in accepting the use of a superior sales tool, and paring it back to the level of a virtual tour. Here is the reason for this post.

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Like him or hate him, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.com is going to be remembered as a staple within the 2.0 mainstream. Today he has written what I believe to be a monumental blog post, one that will be leaned on very heavily as a source of information regarding “The Big Fizzle” that is becoming Silicon Valley.

For many of us whom started on our quest for innovation and fun well before the nonsense started (yes, WellcomeMat is a team that thrives on the challenge of what we are doing and how we can change the face of real estate), “2.0″ is the most annoying catch-phrase known to man. 2.0 is what “The New York Times” is to PR people, what the phrase “Xtreme” is to action sports lovers. In a word, LAME. Hype is something that I (Christian) personally run from, and 2.0 is the phrase that sums it up.

Is the sky falling in Silicon Valley? I don’t want to be bearish because I know many people out there, deserving of big success, that will become part of the fallout. But, although the face of the losers has changed this time around, The Big Fizzzzzzle has just been documented by the guy that is partially responsible for 2.0’s occurrence. Good thing WellcomeMat is a nitch play, with zero debt, and no obligations to VC firms. It could get ugly.

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Alright…we know this blog isn’t as cool or highly trafficked as Sellsius’, but we gotta help these dudes. Rudy and Joe are effectively going where no real estate bloggers have gone before: they are taking their unbelievable show to the road, and throwing a party in each destination city. This is all taking place under the highly confidential code name of “Blog Tour USA.”

They have a limited amount of ad space left on their venture wagon of choice, but have yet to raise enough money to get the wheels turning. For only $300, they will place your locally/nationally famous face on the back of the truck, and call attention to your blog or site on the “Blog Tour USA” landing page. This is great value, but-more importantly-you’d be helping Rudy and Joe do what none have done before.

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I’m sure most anyone (in Real Estate) near a TV set sunday night caught the Leslie Stahl’s 60 Minutes story , “Chipping Away At Realtors’ Six Percent”. Well we have roughly 60 minutes of video on WellcomeMat involving a similar theme. It’s from the “High Touch, High Tech Debate” that took place at this year’s Inman Real Estate Connect NY. The video features Allan Dalton, President, Move, Inc., Real Estate Division and Glenn Kelman, CEO, Redfin. Watch as they discuss a variety of topics including their views on the six percent commission and the National Association of Realtors (NAR) to marketing real estate and the pros and cons of the MLS system. Enjoy!

Part 1:
Thanks to Rudy and the Sellsius crew for the great video footage! Check out their WellcomeMat video channel if you get a chance.

Video Tours by Wellcomemat

- Redfin Realtor Real Estate Video Part 2

- Redfin Realtor Real Estate Video Part 3

- Redfin Realtor Real Estate Video Part 4

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Team WellcomeMat is pleased to announce that we have partnered with ForSaleByOwner.com to power video on their site. We went “live” on their site a couple weeks back, and are more than just a little excited about it. See, WellcomeMat has been around for years: Phil, Haider and I have been working on WellcomeMat and driving our wives nuts with this idea since the late Fall of 2004. We were all up to our eyeballs with life’s responsibilities (holding full-time jobs, having children etc), but were finally able to take our private beta to our friends and families in March of 2006, later opening up to the public in July, 2006. I can easily say that there weren’t a whole lot of people taking real estate video seriously before or after our release. In fact, we spent quite a bit of time explaining to people that virtual tours weren’t “real” video. Seems silly right?

Colby Sambrotto, COO and co-founder of ForSaleByOwner.com, got video right away. After I left my B2B sales job at Webroot Software to pursue WellcomeMat full-time, I began pounding the phones like you wouldn’t believe. It didn’t take me long to realize that The Mat was facing quite the uphill battle: I was hung up on, misunderstood (a lot), given “the heisman,” and-in general-not taken very seriously. Not the case with ForSaleByOwner.com. In short, they get video, know the power of this medium, and have shouldered the cost of video for their customers. All new ForSaleByOwner.com customers can now upload video on their site, or send in video tapes for WellcomeMat to upload for free.

In the end, WellcomeMat is a non-political, non-judgemental, technology company. We want to help the world to real estate and local business video. Much of what we do on the .Com is related to building out our solution(s) for agents, brokers, property managers, leasing agents etc. But, no matter how any of us feel about the FSBO segment of the marketplace, it is a thriving, viable business that is not going away. Now the king of this space is using video on a mass scale.

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Sterner here…and, as usual, I need to start this post with an apology for falling off the face of the planet for a while: just another day at hyper-release central.

Something keeps coming up, and I thought it would be a good idea to address it here on the blog: video as a listing enhancement. Yes, video can make your listing a heck of a lot better. Chances are your peers aren’t using it, and that you’ll stand out as a result. But, after the argument of virtual tours vs. video subsides, we come to another question in the linear path of real estate video: is a video tour just a listing enhancement? Not a chance!

If you have enough of them in one place on your channel, real estate videos could be the destination. Yes, when an end user finds what they are looking for, they will need to see more listing-type info. But, to think of video as only a listing enhancement is short-sighted. If you were a person on a property hunt, and knew that you could find nothing but real estate videos in one place, I bet you’d be opting to search that database, potentially before the listing site.

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