For the first time in many, many years, I’m riding in black leather over the East River toward Manhattan. Lamont, the 67-year-old man driving the Towncar, has already explained why he lives in New York: “I love the night life.” He said that he hopes to die at 94, “killed by somebody’s husband.”
He told me about all the bigshots who had sat where I was sitting. His favorite client, Willie Mays, rode with him all over New Jersey, only to pretend to forget him when they ran into each other at a hospital. Mays walked right past Lamont, and told Lamont’s buddy (who had refused to believe Lamont really knew Mays): “He’s a good fella but he don’t where the hell he’s going. We stayed lost that whole day.”
Lamont told me about Charles Barkley, who said about New York: “where else in the f*** can you look at 200 people trying to cross the street and the second they leave, another 200 replace ‘em?”Lamont said he charmed Franco Harris’s wife, and will never again drive Star Jones, for reasons he couldn’t disclose. It’s nice to get a ride.
Last time I came here, I turned down the Lincoln Towncar — and spent 11 p.m. – 2 a.m. waiting for the A train, riding the A train, sobbing on the A train, and, finally & most tragically, watching the A train turn into an Express (to Harlem) just before my midtown stop.
ABC News paid for the car this time – but only after the usual humiliating intimations of poverty from Redfin — and it seems a shame that there’s no one here to have a party with. We’ll be on Good Morning America Friday morning, talking to Diane Sawyer about the science of real estate.
Our theme this time is how you can tell when a seller will give ground on price, and when he’ll stand firm. To get ready, we studied 9,053 records of past sales in Washington, California and Virginia.
Redfin’s Rob McGarty did most of the work, guided by stats man Mose Andre, who recently compared me to the Segway-driving illusionist on Arrested Development, “but in a good way.” (I watched the show for the first time that night and made a mental note: tone it down.)
If you want to watch the show, the hit-time is supposedly 7:45 a.m. (but subject to change). It might be more interesting than the usual interview. Ms. Sawyer has, a producer explained (with a combination of respect and terror), a reputation for spontaneity. I’ll be wearing a loud green shirt with velvet-lined cuffs. Wish us luck.
Many thanks to Ellie, Cynthia and the whole team for their support.
Glenn Kelman recently observed that Silicon Valley pundits have gone off the deep end arguing that intellectual property should be free Free FREE! Glenn’s correct- we all gotta eat, and if we can’t get paid for our work, most of us won’t do it. That applies to musicians, visual artists, computer programmers, mechanical engineers, and physicists.
But Glenn goes too far when he implies that the only issue here is “what’s mine is mine.”
He discusses the Hasbro/Scrabulous brouhaha and points out that the TechCrunch blog is hypocritical when it criticizes Hasbro’s heavy-handed tactics against the Scrabulous knock-off of it’s Scrabble game, but is outraged when Facebook is copied.
What he misses is that ownership of intellectual property should and does have limits.
Even if they were subject to copyright, it’s clear that a lot of games are derived from other games (Scrabble itself is derived from crossword puzzles and from data on the New York Times- should Hasbro have to pay the NYT for every game? No- Scrabble is sufficiently different from crosswords that it’s really a new thing.) I haven’t played Scrabulous, and I’d stipulate that it probably IS a direct ripoff, and that direct ripoffs are sleazy (though a direct ripoff of something from 1936 is different than a direct ripoff of a new piece of art; are the modern remakes of Shakespeare’sMacbeth or of Jane Austen sleazy?)
The basic issue is of public good versus stimulating creative output. Copyright and patents were designed to have limits (in particular time limits) which would let creators profit from their labor, but would also allow others to (eventually) build on their work. There was a recognition that the individual right to profit is important, but that societal good (both in terms of reducing the price of the work, and in terms of the ability to derive works) is also important.
It’s complicated. At least part of the reason it’s complicated is that art and technology are not zero-sum games. Eli Whitney didn’t make money on the cotton gin, and that’s a shame and a crime. But he also made slavery uneconomic (though I don’t think that was his goal), and that turned out to be a very good thing. Volvo invented the modern seatbelt; would it have been reasonable to say that other automakers be disallowed by law from manufacturing seatbelts? If seatbelts had only been in Volvos (and never legislated), would we have airbags? Would we have three-point belts (instead of the early lap belts)? Maybe, maybe not.
Glenn is right to point out the moral shallowness of the simplistic “artists should work for free because people don’t want to pay them” argument. However, he’s wrong if he swings to the other side (”society should assure that only the creators of intellectual property can benefit economically from that property.”) The fair and responsible course is somewhere in the middle.
Yesterday, we blogged about a Redfin screenshot that appeared on PhotoshopDisasters, showing a gigantic dog peering through the sliding glass doors of a Shoreline listing. The screenshot was at the top of Reddit all night, and even though PhotoshopDisasters didn’t link to our site, the listing drew 52,036 views on Redfin. The average number of views for other listings in Washington State was 2.19.
The photographer, Dan Achatz, explains on Flickr that the real estate agent who commissioned the shot had asked him to exclude a dog that appeared in the background of the original photo. “So of course,” he writes, “when she said that she didn’t want to see that damn dog in the shot, I had to not only put it in, but it was also absolutely imperative to embellish it.”
Hats off to the agent for going with it and posting the embellished pic. Hopefully the house sells straight-away. In real estate more than any other industry, everyone tries to act all grown up and boring, but nothing is more essential in marketing, or in life generally, than to make someone smile.
Why has TechCrunch, the technology community’s most influential voice, taken its stand against creative rights?
The latest attack has been against Hasbro, for disabling the Facebook game Scrabulous, which is nothing more than Hasbro’s Scrabble game on Facebook. In doing this, Hasbro has become a caricature of evil for fighting in court against freedom, pluck and Scrabble.
“Hasbro and EA planned their moves very methodically and waited patiently for their chance to strike,” writes Erick Schonfeld. “Perhaps EA felt that it could not compete with Scrabulous other than by taking it out at the knees.”
Michael Arrington has taken similar positions against digital rights for music, and the blogosphere generally has expressed something like contempt for journalists, artists and others whose work has found a new stage on the Internet but often for the profit of the technology distributor — Google News, YouTube, BitTorrent and, for a while, Napster — rather than the creator.
Here’s what’s different: that the party being copied was one of us, a software company rather than an old game company that supposedly doesn’t get it.
I know that, of all people, Redfin folks are supposed to stand for liberating data and disintermediating The Man, but I lose my stomach for it when The Man is someone who has created (or paid the creator of) a game, an essay, a photo, a song. We shake our fists at the record labels but at least they’re paying musicians.
And we shake our heads at newsrooms, but every one has become a wasteland of empty cubes, which is a travesty when more people are reading the news than ever before. Spare me the examples of bands who offer their albums for free, then ask for donations; this is nothing more than online busking, the luxury of a great violinist sawing away at a subway stop.
It isn’t easy being a musician, a game-make or a writer but these are exactly the people who should benefit the most from the Internet, not through netizens’ pseudo-altruism but via the medium that all of TechCrunch’s hyper-capitalists purport to respect: commerce.
That we should get everything for free was once a kind of adolescent anarchism but Chris Anderson and others have made it into something much bigger, the new religion of Silicon Valley. For the folks who don’t have venture capital, free’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
TechCrunch is one of the best blogs out there because it has always stood up for the creative guy over the thief. You guys should do that now, even if it’s for Hasbro.
There’s a home for sale in Shoreline that is either much smaller than it seems, or is being menaced by a giant golden shepherd. Here’s one of the listing photos:
The screen shot, taken from Redfin’s site, has already been featured on PhotoshopDisasters. Seemingly the only rational explanation for the photo is that it’s a marketing gimmick, which in posting about the property on this blog, I have just fallen for…
For a long time, we have all brooded and marveled at how the entire Internet has been deformed by the enormous mass of Google at its center. Just last Friday, Google seemed to conclude that the size of the Web is no larger than the size of its index.
Websites aren’t built anymore for people to use, but for Google to index. As the New York Times noted earlier this month, every Google-optimized site is, in a way, a temple that reinforces Google’s power, built according to rules that Google, like some benign but distant god, has only vaguely outlined.
And let’s face it, without these rules, the Web would be a far less organized, interconnected place: Google favors websites built according to simple principles, whose pages can be updated by its audience, which get lots of links from other sites.
But any system can be exploited, and some popular sites have prospered in part by gaming the system: flooding the index with pages and creating fake links.
Sometimes at Redfin we try to figure out whether to spend our time building a good site for our customers, or for Google. Mostly we try to convince ourselves these are one and the same thing.
For example, we spent a few months re-mapping millions of URLs so they better describe the page they represent (such as http://www.redfin.com/WA/Seattle/2416-24th-Ave-E-98112/home/138344), a Google-driven feature that our users may appreciate but probably not as much as townhouse or parking filters.
And even though we’ve just scratched the surface of how we need to optimize our site for Google, we’ve recently begun to wonder — yes, this is heresy — if drawing lots of random visitors from Google should really be our goal.
Redfin isn’t like ad-driven sites, which make money from visitors regardless of whether they come from Google through some random carom or hear about the site from a friend and plunge in up to their eyeballs.
We don’t get paid until a customer uses our site to buy a house, which usually involves hundreds of visits over half a dozen months (hence our Freakish Depth strategy).
If Google sends the wrong people our way, our traffic may go through the roof but our business grows more slowly. Which is exactly what has been happening (that is, we’re growing, but not as fast as our traffic). So we’ve begun to wonder if Google’s visitors ever stick around long enough to become Redfin addicts.
So we formed a theory, that as the percentage of visitors coming from Google increased (excluding folks searching on “Redfin” and similar terms), more would bounce off. The table below maps some key stats through the first half of 2008; the “bounce rate” on the last row is how many visits end with only one page being visited.
Month
January
February
March
April
May
June
Growth in Unique Visitors
29%
14%
18%
12%
18%
17%
% Redfin’s Visits from Google
14.6%
14.4%
16.6%
18.7%
20.3%
21.2%
Bounce Rate, All Visits
3.50%
3.59%
2.52%
3.33%
2.44%
2.48%
As you can see, as more visits come from Google, fewer of them bounce off. Which basically tells us that Google not only sends more people our way, but sends people our way who apparently decide they’ve come to the right place. What a great search engine! So much for our theory that traffic from Google is lower quality.
In fact, when we survey Redfin’s visitors, 15% say they come to us via a Google search on a non-Redfin term, vs 18% of the people who ultimately buy a home through us. Which is just to say that I should have never doubted Google (traffic stats courtesy of, you guessed it, Google Analytics).
A lot of our customers ask what’s different about buying new construction.
First of all, you’re buying from the person who built it, not the person who called it home. Often, the property is just one of many they are trying to sell.
We asked our agents who specialize in new construction for the most important things to consider when buying a new house or condo.
1. Hire an agent
One that specializes in new construction and isn’t affiliated with the builder.
2. Be creative during negotiations
Builders don’t like to drop their prices. Instead, ask them to cover closing costs or upgrade the kitchen for free.
3. Get it in writing
Don’t sign until everything has been negotiated, agreed upon and written into the contract.
4. Be wary of upgrades
They’re where builders make the most profit. Don’t take upgrades you don’t want or can’t afford.
5. Research the builder
Visit other developments and talk to home-owners. Google the developer for reviews, testimonials and news.
6. Ask for a guarantee
You’re often buying a home that is not completed. What guarantees do you have the home will be ready on time?
7. Get the home inspected
New homes have problems too. Hire an inspector to make sure everytthing is safe and up to code.
8. Bumper-to-bumper coverage
New homes should come with a warranty from the builder. Know what is and isn’t covered and for how long.
9. Look to the future
Check with the city to see what is planned for the surrounding area. If you have a view, will it still be there in 5 years?
10. Find your own lender
Don’t use the builder’s lender. Shop around for the loan that is best for you, not them.
This is our list, but what do you think? If we’ve missed something, leave a comment.
In our last release we added a “Share on Facebook” link to our details pages that when hovered over brings up a menu from AddThis letting you bookmark the home to your favorite social bookmarking service.
Before launching the feature we debated what the top service would be. Glenn, voted for Delicious, I voted for Facebook. In fact I thought Facebook would win by a long shot which is why we used the text “Share on Facebook” instead of something more generic like “Share on…”
Curious who won the bet we used the AddThis analytics feature to settle up. Here’s a breakdown of how many times the various services have been used:
Of course, maybe the fact that the link specifically calls out Facebook is the reason it is the leading bookmarking service :).
Here’s a breakdown by day.
In our next release we’ll add a Facebook icon in front of the link to increase its discoverability.
Big thanks to Dan, for pushing us to use AddThis.com, instead of adding only a Share on Facebook link.
Lots of prominent venture capitalists, including Fred Wilson and now Bill Gurley, are writing this week about the dearth of IPOs first reported by Matt Richtel in the New York Times. This quarter was the first since 1978 that a venture-financed company didn’t go public.
But the real headline isn’t the dearth itself, but the fact that some of the smartest people in VC are fine with it. It’s like the PGA moved the Masters to a pitch-and-putt, and Tiger Woods applauded the decision.
The argument goes that a public company just isn’t a worthwhile aspiration anymore for Internet or software companies, in large part because of a lions-tigers-and-bears litany of regulations that the National Association of Venture Capitalists is asking everyone to complain about. Bill cites 15 (holy cow!) companies in Benchmark’s portfolio with more than $50 million in revenues, all still private.
“I don’t think we have a demand problem, we have a supply problem,” Bill writes. “No one wants to manage a public company.”
This is a pleasant conceit, that all of us could manage a public company if only we wanted to. But the real supply problem is how many companies can — not how many want to — grow into large, profitable, stand-alone businesses.
In this respect, Bill chose the wrong threshold for companies that could go public. At $50 million in revenues, you would be spending 2 - 4% of revenues (roughly $1 - 2 million per year) on the costs of being public. That doesn’t sound good.
But how many Web 2.0 companies today have a chance of reaching $100 million in revenues, then $500 million? Maybe we have the next Google, eBay, or Amazon among our ranks now. If so, I doubt the new regulations are enough to deter them from growing into public companies.
Characterizing folks who cash out as just smarter or more realistic than those who want to build a stand-alone business seems just as misguided as the 90’s macho insistence on an IPO for its own sake. There are some businesses where M&A makes more sense, and others that can prosper on their own (forget the companies so disruptive or weird that few companies will want to buy them).
M&A today is just a different game of the musical chairs we played in 1999. Who is going to be left to buy technology companies if technology companies stop going public? It can’t just be Google and Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and IAC forever.
That means we have to keep building business to be businesses, not just to get bought. There are plenty of entrepreneurs who, if they could grow a business to $100 million and beyond, would prefer to keep building it rather than get acquired. The hard part for us isn’t the regulations, it’s getting past $100 million, which takes patience, big thinking, and a huge appetite for risk.
When brilliant folks like Bill Gurley and Fred Wilson start giving up on that project, it’s time for high-tech to get its mojo back.
Redfin's corporate blog is the place to read what Redfin employees have to say about Redfin, the real estate industry and other topics such as life at a startup or usability and web design.
Even if they were subject to copyright, it’s clear that a lot of games are 
e Web would be a far less organized, interconnected place: Google favors websites 
