RealTown's RealTalk

"A couple of thoughts on this. First, and most obvious, this demonstrates what great value the Three Amigos give us on RealTalk. Maybe all agents don't realize this but you don't have to be an agent to be a member of RealTalk. Anybody can join! And you can blog here without it costing you anything.

Secondly, listen up John, Saul and Mike - this could be a great opportunity to promote RealTalk as the FREE real estate platform where consumers can interact with agents. Personally, I find ActiveRain too cumbersome and complicated. RealTalk is more intuitive and has the options of email or web delivery which is a massive plus to me."

John's comment:

Thanks for your support, Bernard. It's hard to believe it's been 13 years since we started RealTalk. The focus has always been on user-generated content, long before anyone heard of Web 2.0 and online community. For most of those years, we were a relatively easy to operate e-mail based listserv, moderated daily by Saul and myself. Two years ago, we integrated RealTalk into the www.RealTown.com portal where we combined under one roof our many online communities along with featured Articles, free RealTown Blogs, and our latest RealTown Groups. Thanks to advances in our Search Engine Optimization strategies implemented by Mike and the tech team, we receive positive feedback from our RealTown Bloggers that their posts are picked up right away by Google.

As we develop our neighborhoods component, we expect to attract more consumers and find ways for our real estate professional members to interact with them. That's a good reason for you to keep those RealTown Profiles up to date and complete. RealTalk will continue to play a key role. We find that members like yourself appreciate the fact that RealTalk is delivered by e-mail as well as via the web interface (including archived content).

We would love to add enhancements to the web experience, although there are financial constraints with design and progamming issues. RealTalk remains a free service (there is some ad revenue) and we are considering a donation model similar to what Wikipedia and Creative Commons employ. It would be strictly voluntary, for those who see the value in RealTalk and wish to support our efforts.