"Technology Losers" . . . and Ostriches

Technology Adapters: Early, Late . . & Never

If you've yet to "Facebook," "Twitter," "Link In" (yes, they're all verbs) or otherwise seriously partake of the orgy of social media apparently going on out there, I'm sure you'll relate to the following:

If Caroline Cua’s iPhone looked anything like her closet, where she keeps her dozens of pairs of shoes, she would have screen after screen of applications. But instead her iPhone is nearly empty.

And that’s just fine with her, until she finds herself among friends whose iPhones are studded with icons. When a fellow iPhone owner asked recently to see her apps, she grew self-conscious. “I said to him, ‘O.K., now I’m officially feeling like a loser,’ ” she recalled.

--"Skirting the Glut of iPhone App's: When Phones Are Just Too Smart"; The New York Times (1/2/2010)

Actually, there's an even more antediluvian state than the self-described "technology loser" (above): "technology ostrich."

That would be anyone putting off buying an iPhone because they don't want to be one of the technology losers walking around with only 5 app's installed on their smart phone.

Like me!

In my defense, I know lots of other seasoned Realtors walking around with not-so-smart phones because . . . they still work!

In my case, they also open up Realtor lockboxes (because my Treo has an infrared beam, I don't need to carry around a separate "fob"); and synch, reliably, with my calendar and contact list.

If it ain't broke . . .

Edina Realty's Crystal Ball

On Tap for 2010: Social Media, and
(More) Foreclosures and Short Sales

No, I don't predict the direction of home prices.

But housing trends are another matter.

Fortunately, if you're an Edina Realty agent, corporate does that for you (or at least helps).

Each year, senior management highlights at the annual meeting -- and reinforces during the year -- the themes and issues it expects to drive the marketplace over the coming twelve months.

From experience, their track record is pretty good.

So what is management emphasizing now?

Training on how to get up to speed on two things: 1) So-called "social media" like FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.; and 2) handling foreclosures and short sales.

If there is an honorable mention, it would be becoming proficient with alternative financing (contract for deeds, assumable mortgages, and various other "seller-facilitated" financing).

"Your Money's No Good"

Boycotts, Social Media & Goldman Sachs

If artists doodle, and musicians play little ditties in their head, what do bloggers "noodle around" with in their free time?

At least in my case, provocative phrases with multiple meanings.

Like, "your money's no good."

So far, I'm already up to four, alternative definitions:

One. "I won't accept your money because I hold you in high esteem" (in other words, it's free).

What the bartender says to a longtime friend, star athlete, war hero, etc.

Two. "I won't accept your money because I hold you in low esteem" (in other words, the price is infinite).

What fashionable, upper East Side restaurants now say to Ruth Madoff, or gated communities in LA presumably used to say to OJ Simpson after he was acquitted of murder, but before he was (finally) sent to prison for armed robbery last year.

Three. Your money, specifically, is no good: your credit cards have been revoked, your bank account is overdrawn, etc.

Four. Your money's no good -- and neither is anyone else's -- because the currency has been debased (as they say, this one's "ripped from today's headlines").

Ostracism, 21st Century-Style

Of the four possible meanings, the one I find the most tantalizing is #2.

Combine the latest social networking technology; some old-fashioned notions about boycotts, shunning, and ostracism; and a feckless, co-opted political system -- and suddenly you've got a way to deal with a corporate miscreant like Goldman Sachs.

Namely, society could collectively refuse to do business with Goldman Sachs and its greedy, economy-wrecking executives.

Boycott, the term for such collective action, is usually thought of as a refusal to buy from someone. In fact, the term comes from the local Irish community's refusal to sell to Charles Boycott, after Boycott took the landowners' side in a labor dispute in 1880.

And to think, they had to organize their boycott without the benefit of email, smart phones, instant messaging, or Facebook!

P.S.: One of the funniest stand-up comedy bits I ever heard was (a then unknown) Rob Schneider cataloguing the various usages of the word "Dude."

As in . . . Approval ("Dude!"); Disapproval ("d-u-d-e"); "Is that a stranger in my bedroom closet?": ('d-u-u-u-de??'). And so in that vein (I think Schneider topped out at 12 meanings).