This week, RE Revealed celebrates our last time hosting the Carnival of Real Estate which is where real estate bloggers around the globe’s articles are submitted for judging and is a great opportunity for bloggers and consumers to read a variety of content. This is our final time hosting as RE Revealed is closing the doors on real estate blogging and focusing strictly on social media. Several entries were thrown out as spam (sorry, a plagiarized story with hundreds of Google ads up top doesn’t count as a fair submission) so without further ado, here are the winners of the CoRE:

Medalists (minus speedos)

1. GOLD MEDAL: Jonathan Dalton’s “Cocktail Parties, Bar Conversations, the BCS and Phoenix Real Estate” wins the magical golden medal not because he rocks a Michael Phelps speedo everywhere he goes but because he personifies the problem that lies in peoples’ amateur analysis of the market. This article *must* be read to the very end, it’s great!
2. SILVER MEDAL: Ardell DellaLoggia’s “Paradigm Shift: Changing the Human Experience” is pretty much a tie for the gold medal, but Dalton’s last name comes first in the alphabet. This article saw a lot of traction this week in the blogiverse and on Twitter, go read and find out why.
3. BRONZE MEDAL: Jim Reppond’s “The P-I Globe and the Bubbleator” talks about the sentimental value of a local landmark and does a great job of drawing in his audience.

Other Entrants (also sans Speedos)

• Joe Manausa’s “Follow Real Housing Market Movements with Trends“
• Jacqui Richey’s “CityCenter Loses Some Condos“
• Brian Block’s “A Guaranteed Way to Lose $54,528 When You Sell Your Home“
• Diana Santos’ “Heritage Hills” Profile
• Silvia Dukes’ “2008 in Review: Home Sales for Hernando Beach“
• COREI’s “Central Oregon Real Estate Investments“
• Thursday Bram’s “An Easy Way to Check for Rental Foreclosures“
• Stacey Doyle’s “Can a Housing Assistance Program Prevent Foreclosure?“
• Chris Lang’s “How to Productively Inspect Many Properties in One Day“
• Jacqulyn Richey’s “A Great Time to Buy in Las Vegas“
• Michael Emilio Rodriguez’s “How to Use Public Records for Real Estate Success“
• The Mortgage Reports’ “Fannie Mae Adds Loan-Level Pricing Adjustments for Condos, Co-Ops & Everyone Else“
• Money Tipper’s “Refinancing Your Mortgage? Get a Reissue Rate on Your Title Insurance
• CRQ’s “Can You Afford a New Home?“
• William Doom’s “New mortgage Guidelines 2009“
• Bring The Blog’s “Housing Predictions for 2009? Keep ‘Em to Yourself“
• Karen Goodman’s “Steps to Improve Your Credit Score“
• Steve Howe’s “Ways to Improve Your First Time Buyer Credit Score“
• Kevin Warmath’s “I’ll Show You Mine if You Show Me Yours“
• Jeonard Cook’s “Home Selling in 2009“

Go ahead and start submitting your articles (by clicking here) from this past week or this upcoming week- be sure to overwhelm next weeks host!!!

co-authored by Benn Rosales

The City as a living organism

With the birth of the major American metropolises, scientists sought out ways to describe how a city is born and how urban sprawl occurs. One of the dominant urban growth theory models that is still used to explain the phenomenon of cities spilling over into more rural areas (thus becoming neighborhoods/subdivisions) is Ernest Burgess’ “Zone Model” (or “Urban Land Use Model” if you’re fancy). He was a sociologist at the University of Chicago, so his model was based on his home city and his aim was to study the city as a living organism and showed that just like in a natural environment, invasion and succession drove competition between species and drove formation of concentric rings. Burgess’ Zone Model served as an ecological model with ethnic groups as species (which is an obsolete measure in modern times as sociologists study zones in terms of socio-economic status).

The Zone Model

So what does all this rainbow mumbo jumbo mean? Remember, Burgess’ study was primarily focused on Chicago in 1920 which meant a lot of immigration and lot of factories which is obviously different in modern cities. Let’s take a quick look:

• Zone I- CBD stands for “Central Business District” and is the most densely populated area, is the primary source for employment and is where transportation systems converge.
• Zone II- the Factory Zone is where the CBD spills over and industrial activities take advantage of the immediately accessible labor and markets. City ports and railyards are located here.
• Zone III- the Transition Zone is where manufacturing/commercial and residential merge and typically contained the poorer urban population in poor living conditions.
• Zone IV- the Working Class Zone is (you guessed it) populated with the working class who have moved up from (but is still lower cost due to) it’s neighboring Transition Zone and was usually called the tenements or the projects.
• Zone V- the Residential Zone is famous for higher quality housing along with longer commutes and was later called “the inner city.”
• Zone VI- the Commuter Zone represents upper class, expensive housing in the suburbs where commuting costs are the highest. In the 20’s, it was most desirable to have land and live far from the industrial noise and pollution.

How does this relate to Social Media?

I’m most interested today in social media as a living, breathing organism, just as Burgess was with city life. If social media is organic (and I would certainly argue that it is), concentric circles of population form, overlap and converge just as Chicago did. The easiest way to look at the Zone Model is to look at the industrial area as the least desirable area to live in and the further you live from it, the more expensive and desirable it is. In social media, the space is virtual and the currency is social capital.

Because we exist in a space (despite it not being physical) and because we use currency, the parallel is easy to make and instead of calling it urban sprawl online, I would call it Internet Social Sprawl.

Internet Social Sprawl Model

This rainbow mumbo jumbo is a little different because we’re not talkin’ Chicago OR the 1920’s, we’re talking about the here and now:

• Zone I- Lurkers are the people who are either so new to the space that they’re simply listening before jumping in, or they’re not hip to a two way conversation. Either way they have no social capital and can’t afford to move out of Zone I (yet).
• Zone II- Casual Users are those who have created profiles on social networks but haven’t build social capital up yet- they haven’t really engaged anyone or produced any content, but they poke their head into conversations here and there.
• Zone III- I would argue that the largest zone is made up of Average Users, people who have a limited network but have social capital within their network. They are spending their social capital to build and grow their networks (on Twitter, their blogs, etc) and are working hard to move out to the suburbs.
• Zone IV- Niche Famous Internet users have great influence in their niche be it an industry, a hobby or otherwise, they’ve been at it long enough to build up social capital that they can expend in their dominated zone. Paul Chaney, Jackie Huba, and Wendy Piersall all live in Zone IV.
• Zone V- people in this zone have Web Fame that greatly transcends niches and location. People like Robert Scoble, Darren Rowse, and Jason Calacanis live in this zone as they have been fine tuning their networks by building and expending massive amounts of social capital and most people in this zone are the earliest adopters of social media giving them the advantage.
• Zone VI- few people live in the Mainstream Zone where they exist as a household name due to their Internet personality. Mark Cuban and Gary Vaynerchuck (aka garyvee) are known even to people that don’t use the Internet which is why they are mainstream names and live in the most expensive zone of all.

Pull it together!

Okay, I’ll pull it together now- the point is that as a living organism, the online space is much like a city where there are hot neighborhoods and ugly neighborhoods and not all people want to be Mainstream, but most would like to at least be Niche Famous as many people (over 18) are online to serve a business purpose. Yeah, the grass IS always greener on the other side, but much like we all dream of a downtown penthouse suite, we’re really aiming for that four bedroom with hardwood floors in the SoCo district. We have goals in mind and we are all working to build up our social capital so we can spend it (aka buy the SoCo house) and the Internet Social Sprawl Model is the easiest way to visualize this phenomenon.

T.S. Eliot and Formalism

In the 1910s through the 1960s, British and American writers responded to the literary romanticism by launching the “New Criticism” movement (also known as “Formalism”). Previously, the focus of writing had been on the experience of the piece, the prestige of the author and a variety of philosophical perspectives taken toward writing. With the Formalism movement, authors focused on the culture of the reader and became less concerned with the intention or background of the writer.

Formalists became entranced with readers perceptions of written word in various ways depending on what they bring to the table. T.S. Eliot unknowingly inspired (and with his earlier writings was a part of) the Formalist movement. His essay, “Traditions and the Individual Talent” was published in a two part series, “The Egoist” followed by “The Sacred Wood,” focused less on his own personal ideologies and intricately tends to the details of every single passage as they pertain to how a reader will experience them.

T.S. Eliot and Social Media

T.S. Eliot is a complicated case study, but in his earlier works, he proved that text has more extrinsic value than intrinsic value and emphasized the culture of the reader and the importance of the lens with which they read the text. Although his works were in a non-digital time and the medium was different, the Formalists preached the same thing as many social media evangelists- the culture of the reader and how they interpret words is excruciatingly important.

In modern times, most bloggers don’t publish works that are only of interest to themselves and because the online culture is collaborative, most digital writers don’t ignore how their reader will experience their work. If writers today subscribed to the notion of the Romanticist movement, the web would be dominated with writing with the most elevated diction level possible, addressing theories that went over the heads of most (and the writer wouldn’t care because the emphasis would be on their own importance and on their intentions).

How would T.S. Eliot view social media? He wouldn’t likely view social media and blogging as a new concept. Eliot’s “New Criticism” was the start of a movement that is still highly applicable today- modern digital writers focus on the culture of the reader and less on their own importance or intentions.

How to use this analysis:

I spent many years at the University of Texas studying English Literature and the last few years as a digital writer and an early adopter of social media, both giving me invaluable insight into how readers and writers function. What I implore you to take away from this article is that as a digital writer you must examine how your reader will interact with your writing and insure that it is never self-serving as that is a severe violation of the culture of social media. With each article you write, a new reader should be able to pick it up and understand it from start to end, so be sure to limit obscure references, self-serving innuendo and never ignore your reader. Social medians’ emphasis on reader experience is a theory dating back nearly 100 years, just ask T.S. Eliot.

co-authored by Benn Rosales

Mama Said Knock You Out

LL Cool J once rapped, “don’t call it a comeback! I’ve been here for years, rockin’ my peers and puttin’ suckas in fear!”

I have let this blog flounder, choke, sputter and die. I have a billion reasons (from writing for and being new media director for Agent Genius, being lead writer at Agent Genius News, writing on the corporate site, etc. blah blah blah), none of which are good enough to have consciously let RE Revealed to go the wayside.

Performing Blog CPR

I decided that instead of selling this labor of love for a bajillion dollars (which is totally what it’s worth), I’m going to use it as proof that a blog can be revived… it just takes some CPR and I invite you to watch me perform my CPR magic (I know what I’m doing, I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night).

Step One: Transformation

This site began as RealtorWives.com, my first blogging attempt ever. It was a place for wives of practicing Realtors (like me) to write, rant and share their daily lives alongside their beloved husbands but I was the only wife in America that cared to do such a thing. So, I moved off of Blogger, got a blog makeover (thanks to @agentgenius) and started talking about what I really wanted to- Austin real estate and sometimes national real estate.

Today, R.E. Revealed will transform its focus into what consumes all of my time now- social media. The RE in the title has stood for “Real Estate” but today becomes “re” as in “re-revealed.” As a social media strategist, much of what I do is study the environment and reveal what others are saying, how the culture is forming and changing and much of what I do is not originate theory, rather reveal it in my own words based on my own experiences. Thus, the site will transform away from RE Revealed to rerevealed.

Step Two: Set 10 Goals

In order to resuscitate this site, I have a lot of work to do. Do you think I can achieve my goals? Are there any I should add? Read on…

1. The next few weeks, I plan on cleaning up the sidebar and my bio up top.
2. The blogroll will likely become its own page and will be expanded outside of the real estate space.
3. I have to actually comment on the blogs that I read so people have a reason to revisit my site.
4. Use of Twitter and Facebook will be huge in my Blog CPR, I’ll announce changes, challenges and encourage people to watch for results.
5. Because much has changed since the site was overhauled last year, I’ll need to update plug-ins but I’m not sure with what, so stay tuned.
6. Because of Agent Genius, I regularly speak, am contacted for interviews by new and old media, I guest write and of course get invites to some of the most posh social media parties. What I aim to change is the width of my reach outside of the real estate space.
7. Traffic must come up and it will take a magical potion of Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, forums and email signature efforts.
8. I aim to be realistic- I can’t possibly blog every day and so far, I don’t have a set schedule, I’ll be writing as time allows. I may establish a more regimented schedule later.
9. Continue awarding the Nacho Blogger award and doing Bubble Gum Interviews but this will be for anyone in social media, not just real estate people.
10. My MOST AWESOMETASTIC Goal is to publish the results of the Blog CPR endeavor at the end of six months with tips on what I did, what succeeded, what failed and suggestions on how others can revive a dormant blog.

So Stick Around…

I’m focused on new media and I couldn’t be more excited! So call your mom, holler at your dog, and tell a friend- REREVEALED is back!

Scared to DEATH!

Look, I am terrified of haunted houses but I’m still hard to impress. I tend to talk to the actors and ignore things jumping out at me, but we went to the Mansion of Terror and while my husband and young’n loved it and wanted to go again, I was the one who made everyone laugh because I screamed the ENTIRE time and actually RAN out of the haunted house. True story.

The Mansion of Terror returns for its 5th season and was rated America’s scariest Haunted House by Liongate Films. Admission includes two separately themed haunted houses in the same location and you will be terrified in the Slaughter Circus with a truly twisted take on an 1800s sideshow and circus complete with claustrophobic passageways and bloody screaming clowns, AND the second house Blood Frenzy which reminded me of a much much scarier version of the Saw movies (seriously).

This picture was taken after we finished- note my dilated pupils. This is no joke, people.

Hacked Up Body Parts

It’s not all just hacked up body part props, it’s also charitable… the Mansion of Terror owner Norm Glenn is a firm believer in giving back to the Austin community (through charities like the American Cancer Society), “there is no sense in running a business here in Austin if you can’t give back to the people who need it in our local community.” So go, get the pants scared off of you and help your community. The creepy clown said you have to, so go to the Mansion of Terror in North Austin.

Recently, I shared a series of photos taken at one of my favorite Austin coffee houses, the Spider House Cafe. My husband and I have very fond memories of chillin’ at the SHC and little known fact: our bed’s headboard is made from the house’s original shutters!

In comments, local painter Lavanna Martin revealed her secret that she is a coffeehouse artist and she may be painting you while you’re sipping your jumbo organic fair trade coffee and pecking away at your iPhone. She is a wonderfully gifted artist and I am amazed that she can do a portrait at such a rapid pace before her secret subjects slip away! I love that she keeps an Art Journal where she records why she chose her subjects and what she was feeling. She also does commissioned work for which I anticipate she will soon be a commonly known name in Austin, check her out!

Why I Care:

Big Big News

This week at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, Wal-Mart announced a new program to reduce plastic shopping bag waste 33% per store by 2013.

The program will focus on reducing the amount of plastic bags distributed at Wal-Mart stores, encouraging customers to purchase and use reusable bags, and promoting more recycling options for bags.

This is INCREDIBLE!

If the effort is successful, the program could reduce energy consumption by approximately 678,000 barrels of oil annually and reduce CO2 emissions by 290,000 metric tons per year, the equivalent of removing 53,000 cars from the road annually.

The announcement is good news certainly and having the world’s largest retailer acknowledge the harmful effects of plastic shopping bags is a big step in the right direction. Within the next few weeks, the first round of data will come in from the Austin plastic bag voluntary reduction program. It will give us the opportunity to take stock, see what we’ve accomplished and then plan for the future.

Source: Bag The Bags Coalition

Last week, TechCrunch came to Austin and in partnership with AustinVentures threw a mega party at posh Austin club, Pangaea and Moximity threw the afterparty at The Belmont where Irish rock band Automata played on the outdoor stage. We hung out with some of our friends in Austin and got to meet new ones, check it out (and PS: Benn had the camera, hence why I’m in each shot (PSS: HERE is complete coverage of the event):

First Up:

From left to right: Cory, me, and the back of Omar’s head.

Too Much Awesomeness:

AustinAaron (who is the only one who can out-talk me) and me, post-red eye repair!

Mr Monopoly:

Gus Rojo, who has to be one of Austin’s youngest brokers.

Loungin’:

PCourt on the left (don’t ask his real name, he’s like Cher and just goes by PCourt) and AustinAaron with the dual-action longhorns/rockon hand signal.

The A-List:

AustinAaron, me, AgentGenius (Benn), RobQuig, Julie Gomoll, and Gus Rojo, at the Moximity afterparty!

Last year today, my brother died in a car accident. He was only 24 and left behind a then 8 week old and 1 year old and a wife. It’s sad but we are so thankful we had the time together that we did.

The real estate community reached out to our family at that time in an unprecedented way- money was raised for my brother’s wife because he was so young, insurance wasn’t a thing on his mind and with kiddos, it looked like a tough road. We’re all still recovering, each in our own ways but I wanted to share some pictures with you of my brother’s babies that are current:

Thank you all, I am still in awe of how everyone stepped up to the plate. I will be back online tomorrow, today we’ll be visiting my brother.

I put together an image tribute on AG and everyone is sharing their stories of where they were when the planes hit. Please go share yours.

God bless the survivors and those who lost their lives.