{"id":1020,"date":"2007-02-09T08:17:28","date_gmt":"2007-02-09T15:17:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=1020"},"modified":"2007-05-13T20:02:02","modified_gmt":"2007-05-14T03:02:02","slug":"what-if-redfin-gave-a-pr-offensive-and-nobody-came","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1020\/what-if-redfin-gave-a-pr-offensive-and-nobody-came\/","title":{"rendered":"What if Redfin gave a PR offensive and nobody came?"},"content":{"rendered":"

We pulled out all the stops<\/a> for Redfin.com’s announcement yesterday<\/a> because we thought it was important news. Such insiders we are, like Obscure Sports Quarterly<\/i> subscribers glued to ESPN-8 for the Women’s Curling Semi-Finals. On and off all morning, I combed Google and Technorati for news, linking to what I found<\/a>. Bottom line: Big yawn.<\/p>\n

Redfin employee Matt Goyer provides a similar rundown<\/a>, catching a few that I missed. Goyer also does the kind of stupid Realty.bot math trick that we have learned to expect from fawning news coverage of stupid Realty.bots: In adding three agents, Redfin.com grew by 340%. No, the number of MLS listings on its stupid Realty.bot grew by 340%. Redfin grew its head-count and its burn rate.<\/p>\n

The only truly amazingly stupid math I saw, though, was at The Real Estate Economy<\/a>, which cannot tell an apple from an orange, but which knows they must<\/i> be equal if there are a million of them:<\/p>\n

When Redfin gets up to six cities, it should carry a total of about a million listings on any given day, roughly the same that rival Trulia currently stocks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It would take an hour to sort out every idiocy in that one sentence, and that may be the actual problem: The Realty.bot revolution is being fomented by geeks who can’t do the math<\/a> and is being heralded by dinks who can’t think at all.<\/p>\n

Marlow Harris<\/a>, by pointed contrast, shows us what can be done with a fully-functioning mind and an insider’s insight:<\/p>\n

One of the problems I have with Redfin is their continual commoditization of the bad-boy stance, their claim of being the outsider, the renegade ready to fight against The Man, ready to defend their clients against the Real Estate Industrial Complex, when in reality the business is made up of hundreds of thousands of individuals. There’s no cartel. There are thousands of little real estate offices all across the U.S., with 100’s of MLS’s, each with their own rules. Redfin has co-opted the power of dissent by appropriating the language and symbolism of non-conformist youth and tech\/geek culture. By inserting themselves into the real estate equation, Read more<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We pulled out all the stops for Redfin.com’s announcement yesterday because we thought it was important news. Such insiders we are, like Obscure Sports Quarterly subscribers glued to ESPN-8 for the Women’s Curling Semi-Finals. On and off all morning, I combed Google and Technorati for news, linking to what I found. Bottom line: Big yawn. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,5,27],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1020","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-disintermediation","7":"category-marketing","8":"category-real-estate","9":"category-redfincom","11":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1671,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1671\/redfin-cops-another-12-million-raising-investors-stake-in-the-discount-realtybot-to-40000-per-closed-transaction\/","url_meta":{"origin":1020,"position":0},"title":"Redfin cops another $12 million, raising investors’ stake in the discount realty.bot to $40,000 per closed transaction","author":"Greg Swann","date":"July 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The indefatigable John Cook:Redfin has raised an additional $12 million in venture funding, money that the Seattle discount real estate broker will use to enhance its Web site and expand into new markets. First up for Redfin are the Washington D.C and Baltimore areas, which are being unveiled today. Next\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2368,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2368\/want-to-get-on-the-today-show-first-get-yourself-a-death-grip-on-the-obvious-then-pimp-it-in-a-snazzy-press-release\/","url_meta":{"origin":1020,"position":1},"title":"Want to get on the Today show? First, get yourself a death grip on the obvious, then pimp it in a snazzy press release","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 13, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't want to be mean to Redfin.com. It's Christmas, for one thing. Plus which, Cynthia Pang, Redfin's PR Queen, is even nicer than David Gibbons. And, all things considered, Redfin's latest bold PR thrust is not all that awful. But still, it is funny... The fact is, these Dilberts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4101,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/4101\/why-are-we-wasting-our-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":1020,"position":2},"title":"Why Are We Wasting Our Time?","author":"Glenn Kelman","date":"August 26, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Over the past few days, Redfin got into it with a bunch of other real estate websites. What else is new? In an argument about who has the most homes for sale, which began on TechCrunch and continued on Redfin's blog, one participant argued that what consumers really care about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Redfin\\'s Search Options","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/redfinfilteringoptions.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1083,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1083\/thinking-skeptically-to-rain-on-redfincoms-parade\/","url_meta":{"origin":1020,"position":3},"title":"Thinking skeptically to rain on Redfin.com’s parade . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 26, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm not a Jesuit, but I play one on BloodhoundBlog. The real truth is, I'm a roll-your-own Jesuit, more auto-didact than anything. I didn't have Brian Brady's inestimable advantage of having had the gift of reason literally pounded into me. Instead, I had to stuff it between my own ears\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13637,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/13637\/looking-for-a-realtor-designation-that-really-means-something-how-about-this-too-outspoken-for-redfin\/","url_meta":{"origin":1020,"position":4},"title":"Looking for a Realtor designation that really means something? How about this? “Too Outspoken For Redfin.”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"November 16, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Redfin.com is in the long, slow process of firing us from their referral partnership program. I've known this was going to happen since last Tuesday. It's what I was writing about in my most influential voice in the on-line world of real estate post:They piss and moan to each other\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2116,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2116\/dont-feel-badly-traditional-brokers-even-french-people-hate-stahl\/","url_meta":{"origin":1020,"position":5},"title":"Don’t feel badly, traditional brokers- even FRENCH people hate Stahl","author":"Lani Anglin","date":"October 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"For those of you not up to speed, the 10 second version of why we\u00a0can't stand\u00a0Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes dates back a few months to a grossly slanted piece that amounted to Stahl's stacking the story to \"prove\" that traditional real estate brokerages are stupid swindlers even if they\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Real Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Real Estate","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/real-estate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}