I’m going to start a new feature. It’s called the Vendor Alley Shit List.
Here’s how it works. Whenever I see or hear about (from you readers) of a company/person/group doing something completely wrong/idiotic/lame, I’m going to post the video below and maybe a short snippet of why this company/person/group deserves to make the list.
Oh, by the way, this is not a joke.
When the Swanepoel Power 200 (SP200) list came out I didn’t catch a few other categories they had listed, Emerging Leaders, Trendsetters and Social Influencers. And they are full of some of my favorite people, and while I can’t highlight them all I thought some deserve quick shout out.
Shelley Specchio was listed in the Emerging Leaders section. Note to the SP200 folks, Shelley “emerged” about 10 years ago, and has been a strong leader in this industry ever since, first at NNRMLS and now MIBOR.
So glad to see Joseph Cullom get some props. What I like about Joseph is that his is unafraid to try new things and shake it up a bit. We need more leaders like that.
And speaking of shaking things up, Tim Dain, has been the mad scientist in the MLS world. You can see a lot of his fingerprints on the many initiatives out there today.
And Jeremy Crawford has really taken the horse by the reins with RESO. The sense of urgency is higher than ever, just like the number of attendees to his conferences.
On the vendor side the more I learn about Buyside the more I’m impressed with what Charles Williams is putting together.
The first time I met Tyler Gordon I was impressed with his product and vision for a more connected experience in real estate.
It’s hard to highlight any of the Social Influencers list because I follow them all. But you gotta be reading everything Sam DeBord writes, Katie Lance is a pleasure to work with, and Heather Elias has recently started a company, Artisan Consulting.
“We believe MarketView Broker will become an essential tool for brokers to recruit top agents, gain market share, have a deeper knowledge of the markets they serve and provide a clear competitive advantage in a highly competitive marketplace,” said ShowingTime President Michael Lane.
“It can be accessed on any device from anywhere, and will be available to customers and prospective customers looking to grow their presence in the 300+ markets where ShowingTime offers services.”
I’ve always been impressed with ShowingTime. They are doing a lot of things right and you can tell there is a lot of thinking from the top down. Here’s a few observations.
1. They invest in themselves – They’ve made some savvy acquisitions to increase market share of their core product ShowingTime.
2. They made their data an asset – They are creating a proprietary dataset based on the data they collect through their own products. Their ShowingTime Showing Index tracks the average number of buyer showings on active residential properties on a monthly basis.
3. They give their customers better ways to leverage their data. – They are also creating (or acquiring) other products that leverage that data with products like MarketStats, and now MarketShare.
A couple small quibbles – Their UI, mostly on their MLS product, and having an API (iframes are not cutting it anymore). While I think they are doing a good job in data visualization in reports, I think that some focus on UI would really pay a lot of dividends. And making it easier for developers to access their data (via an API) for other apps would only increase its value.
