ActiveBob.....It's always Raining!

We get a couple thousand posts a day on ActiveRain. You leave tens of thousands of comments every day on each other's posts. It shouldn't shock anyone that every once in a while a comment might be left that could be interpreted in a way other that what the author of the comment meant. I want to share with you a recent comment left by a member that was interpreted very wrong and the potential implications of how it was interpreted.

The comment was left on a post talking about Senator Obama and his choice of running mates this past week. The comment said:

"Seriously, thanks for the welcome... this is very interesting, especially for a guy whose knuckes still scrape when he walks."

Taken out of context it could be thought that the commenter was making a racial slur. A number of members contacted us and suggested as much and said that they were offended. When I first went to review the comment, I immediately thought something different. You see, after doing this job for a while, you start to realize you have to look at things from more than one angle.

So I thought to myself......"self, why did he says 'thanks for the welcome'?" The post wasn't a post welcoming him to AR. And the person who posted the blog had not commented to him directly. Was the commenter new and the person whose post he was commenting on had maybe welcomed him on a different post? I also thought "self, could his knuckles comment mean something else?" Is it possible that he meant that he was technically challenged and was in fact referencing himself with some self depricating humor. Did he mean that he was akin to a Neadrethal since they didn't have computers and this site would have been tough to grasp?

So what did I do? I asked him what he meant. Here is his response.

.....but what I was referring to as interesting was
this site Active Rain, not Obama. XXXX commented to me something about
how interesting this site is and I was just agreeing and that I'm a
dinosaur-technologically speaking, but coming along... something along
that line... I can't retrieve the comment now that he sent me... I'm
really bothered by this. Especially, because of it seeming like a
racist comment. You see, I can't be a racist because I believe we are
all one race. I also respect authority and a Senator trumps a publisher
in my book. I do not throw labels around and tag people with names.
I hope this clarifies a little more.

You can find the entire comments and discussion here, along with an apology from the member, Bob Horning. Mr. Horning was gracious enough to allow me to post about this because I think it's a good lesson in being careful what you write. Bob and I have shared a few emails and something he said was very poignant.

"I didn't realize how many people would be reading these things"

Just remember, lots of people are reading. Thanks again Bob, I really appreciate your allowing me to do this.

I was on vacation for the last six days and my inbox is PISSED at me. It appears that there is no end to it. I was even allowed an hour a day to try sort things out while I was gone and pass on the most vital emails.........it didn't work.

So here I am on a saturday, in the office trying to catch up. If you sent me something in the last week and I haven't responded, it's because I didn't care.......haha!

Hopefully I will be able to dig out by Monday or Tuesday. I thought I would be refreshed but apparently Kelan doesn't understand the concept of a relaxing vacation just yet at one year old. He had all new stuff to terrorize and kept us on our feet pretty much the whole week. :-)

(This applies to a very small minority here. But if you see yourself in anything I am writing, then I am talking to you)

I'm not as nice as I have to be here on ActiveRain. I represent our company in everything I do here so I want to make sure people's interactions with me leave a great taste in their mouth. I want them to walk away thinking, "wow, that was great customer service for a free website"

I think that most of the time that's the feeling people get. But in real life, I could never be this nice...........

I have been answering customer support tickets for the last hour and I had to take a break and give you a few thoughts......

Let me give a lesson in asking for assistance:

Typing in all caps is akin to screaming. I'm not a small guy and I can almost guarantee that if you were standing in front of me asking for assistance to get the score in your profile fixed, you WOULD NOT BE SCREAMING AT ME. I can also guarantee that if you were screaming at me, I would be screaming back at you. However, when you type in all caps, I just bite my finger and respond with an answer and thank you for your patience. I promise that wouldn't be my response in real life.

Sending the same ticket in three times in the course of a day getting more and more agitated every time you send it in is not going to get your ticket answered any faster, or any slower. In fact, it's only going to get other people's questions answered slower. We got it the first time and we will attempt to solve it in the order it came in. In real life, if you kept walking in my office and asking when I was going to get to your problem, I would tell you to quit coming in my office. Instead, I just answer the question, move on the next one, answer YOUR question again telling you that I answered it once, but it must be so important that you wrote in twice that it deserves the same answer twice........answer the next......you get the point. Every time, I will probably thank you for your patience.

Using extra question marks and exclamation points is about the same thing as screaming. If you were to ask me a question in real life, then follow it up with, "right? right? right?" You can expect a smart ass answer from me. At the very least I will tell you that I am not stupid, I heard you the first time you asked the question and to not treat me like I am your kid or your spouse that you don't like. I treat people with respect and nothing will get me more irritated then when someone speaks down to me or insinuates that I don't understand or comprehend what they are saying. When you write, your punctuation matters, don't over use it!!!!!!

If there is an issue on our site, do not expect that you are only one experiencing it and that we are targeting you somehow. 99% of what occurs here is automated and sometimes our code gets a little funky and something gets broken. We really appreciate you letting us know. When you let us know, please don't insinuate that we don't care about your issue. We do immensely. In fact, we probably have a very high paid developer looking into as I am responding to you. However, most of the time things are working correctly and it's not us, it's you.........but we'll still help get it straightened out.

There are a lot of you and only a few of us. This is very important to realize. We are not sitting here at the office playing Wii (until after hours) drinking coronas (although I wish we were) and laughing about your issue. What we are actually doing is busting our asses to try to provide you with an amazing free platform to help build your business.

This was totally off the cuff, I'm not even going to review it before I post it. Should I have put it in draft and come back a little later and taken the edge off? Well in my real life I never get the chance to do that, so I thought I'd just let it fly this time.............

Take a look at this little piece of news that just came across my google alert. Make sure that you aren't out making libelous commentary because it could land you in hot water.

Wisconsin man gets 18 months probation in criminal libel case

Where were his libelous comments made? Yep, you guessed it, right here on ActiveRain. The article also mentions that he had his real estate license suspended for a year.

Please be careful what you are writing when posting on ActiveRain. Libel is real and it can cost you your career.

This video might be a little too racy for Bob's official post on this new feature but not for my blog! It reveals an interesting perspective on how members of Tumblr, another blogging network, are using reBlogging. Plus it is hilarious to boot.

Last night, with little fanfare, we launched a concept on ActiveRain called 'reBlog'. In fact, there was such little fanfare I didn't even know it was live until I woke up, reached over, grabbed my iPhone and started reading my emails. (yes, I am addicted to my iPhone, my job, my family and golf). This feature was meant to be tested and have some bugs worked out, but it accidentally slipped through to the live servers. In the first few hours, there were some components that were just not right. We are fixing those right now and the next time you see the 'reBlog' button, things will be in much better working order. Not to mention, we got some GREAT feedback right out of the gate. Sometimes being caught off guard can be a blessing in disguise.

reBlogging on ActiveRain:

According to reBlog.org:

"What is a reBlog?

A reBlog facilitates the process of filtering and republishing relevant content from many other Blogs. reBloggers subscribe to their favorite blogs, preview the content, and select their favorite posts. These posts are automatically published through their favorite blogging software."

This is a feature that will be available for members who have an ActiveRain Outside Blog. When you 'reBlog' an article, the post will be sent to your ActiveRain blog. Minimal points will be awarded when you reBlog an article. There will be a weekly cap on the amount. And reBlogging for points isn't going to provide your readers with a very valuable experience anyway. However, if your blog post is reBlogged by someone else, you will get 25 points every time up to a maximum of 500 points per post.

Every member will have the option of deciding whether or not they want their content to be available for reBlog. In your 'my settings' page, there will be an ability to opt in or opt out of the reBlog platform. If you choose to opt in, then your posts will automatically be included for reBlog. However, you will be able to opt-out on a post by post basis. If you choose to opt-out, then on each post you will be able to opt-in on a post by post basis. then you will not be able to opt-in on a post by post basis.

When you post a blog and make it available to reBlog, then a little reBlog icon will appear on the post on ActiveRain to any member who is logged in. If someone chooses to reBlog your post, they simply click on the reBlog button and they have the ability to write an introduction to the post. They may choose to write an intro or not, but once they reBlog the post, it sends that post only to their ActiveRain Outside Blog. The post is not reBlogged on their ActiveRain blog or Localism.

Member's only posts will not be available for reBlogging

Duplicate content issue: Any time someone reBlogs your post, there will be a link back to your original blog post. If you fed the post to your outside blog, the link from the reBlogged post will be a link to the original post on your outside blog. If you didn't send it to your outside blog, and the post went to Localism, the link back to the original will be a link to the post on Localism. If you only published the post to your ActiveRain blog, then the link back to the original post will be a link to your ActiveRain blog. Matt Cutts, the Google webmaster on SEO spells out that content syndication is OK if you make it clear to google who the original author was. reBlogging on AR does this by linking back to the original source.

The benefits of reBlogging someone elses post:

According to reBlog.org:

"Why should you reBlog?

reBlogs are useful to individuals who want to maintain a weblog but prefer curating content to writing original posts. They can also enable organizations to tap the contributions of their employees, members, and communities-at-large in order to easily redistribute relevant content."

Successful blogging is all about informing your reader. Over and over you will hear that business blogging is not about you, IT IS ABOUT THE CONSUMER. Providing relevant informative content should be your goal. reBlogging gives you the opportunity to bring the best content to the reader of your ActiveRain Outside Blog. Not everyone can be an expert in everything. However, in the halls of ActiveRain we have experts in just about anything real estate related. Being able to utilize the expertise of other members to inform your readers and your clients will be beneficial for everyone, especially your clients.

Think of this scenario: Little Jimmy Loan Officer is an expert on FHA. He blogs his little heart out about FHA. You just got done taking a client out for the day and they just told you that they don't have the 10% they originally thought they had, they only have 5% down. You think FHA is the way to for them and you want them to read up on FHA mortgages. You tell them to go check out your blog later tonight when they get home. You know that Little Jimmy has the best stuff on the web about FHA mortgages in his AR blog. So you jump in and grab two or three posts Jimmy has written and you add a little message to your client at the top........now your client is on your blog, reading the best info out there from LIttle Jimmy Loan officer about FHA mortgages. Not only does your client appreciate the fact that you are finding the best info on the web about FHA mortgages and delivering it to them, they associate you with Little Jimmy Loan Officer, the expert on FHA.

This could play out for information about staging, home inspections, the escrow process, or even information from a local competitor about market conditions. Delivering solid content to your readers should be the goal. You shouldn't have to know everything about everything......but your readers should be able to have that information at their fingertips......on your blog.

Would I reBlog a blog post written by a competitor in my market? Yes! If it was good information that my clientele would be interested in. Real Estate 2.0 is about client centric thinking. Your clients don't want to work with you because you are the source of original information, but because you are the source of good information that they need when they need it.

The benefits of allowing other's to reblog your posts:

In case you haven't figured this out, the name of the game is DISTRIBUTION!!! How wide of a net can you cast with the content you provide. It's the reason many blog here, so that google will pick you up and your reach will be wider. reBlogging gives the person who is an expert on certain topics an ability to have a much wider reach.

If you are a loan officer, stager, inspector, or anyone who works with agents, THIS IS A NO BRAINER. A great post by someone about FHA mortgages could be reBlogged by 1000 agents. if you don't see the power in that, then I don't know what to tell you.

From a real estate agent perspective: just imagine the power of having a hot new listing reBlogged by all of your local competitors, and don't forget about the SEO power of the backlinks you'll earn. Or imagine writing a post about negotiating contracts. If a couple hundred people picked up the post, you could instantly become a recognized expert on the subject (and get a few hundred backlinks to your outside blog).

IMPORTANT - PLEASE READ:

Some people will never buy into this and that's fine. Those that do will soon see their reach expand much further than they could hope for on their own. If you don't want your blogs reBlogged, simply go to your 'my settings' page when the feature is turned on and turn it off. Initially, all members have their global setting set to opt-in. However, all past posts will be set by default to opt-out of reBlogging regardless of your global setting, however you can go back and retroactively make them available on a post-by-post basis.

Once the feature is live (again) you can go and change your setting to opt-out. You will also have the ability to opt-out on a post by post basis if your global setting is set to opt-in. In the same way, if your global setting is set to opt-out, you can opt-in on a post by post basis.

Whether Fort Meade is your neighbor, your employer, or your duty station, you'll want to be there tonight at 7 p.m.  (August 9, 2008)

The Army's fabulous JAZZ AMBASSADORS are performing at the Fort Meade Pavilion.  This concert is open to the public, and there is no cost for parking or attendance.  Just bring your own comfy lawn chairs or a blanket.  The entire family is welcome (but not your pets).

If you're not familiar with The Jazz Ambassadors, you're in for a treat.  This 19-member touring orchestra is part of the Army Field Band, and they literally tour the world to showcase America's own art form - Jazz. Expect to hear your favorite contemporary jazz and jazz standards, plus some pop tunes, dixieland, patriotic music... maybe even some swing, bebop, and Latin music.  The evening promises to be a lot of fun - and the price is right!

This performance is the second in the Summer Band Concert series.  Next week, August 16, The Concert Band & Soldiers' Chorus will perform Tchaikovsky's Overture to 1812 with Cannons.  Again, it is free and open to the public.

DIRECTIONS:

From D.C. - Take MD-295 N towards BALTIMORE to US 175 EAST. Follow 175 EAST approximately 2.5 miles to Fort Meade on the right, and use the Llewellyn Avenue Gate entrance.

From Baltimore - Take MD-295 S towards WASHINGTON to US 175 EAST. Follow 175 EAST approximately 2.5 miles to Fort Meade on the right, and use the Llewellyn Avenue Gate entrance.

From Annapolis- Take I-97 to Rt. 32 towards COLUMBIA.  Take 175 WEST to Fort Meade on the left, and use the Llewellyn Avenue Gate entrance.

Relocating to the Washington-Baltimore area?  Be sure to check out...

Your Online Relocation Package for Anne Arundel County, Maryland

Photo:  Istockphoto

Copyright 2008.  All Rights Reserved.  Margaret Woda.  The Jazz Amabassadors at Fort Meade Tonight 

I don't think I've made a blog post specifically about my son. I have made reference to him on my posts I'm sure and I know I have left comments where I talked about him. He keeps his own blog on ActiveRain and if you haven't read any of it, check it out........he's a talented and gifted writer. I have resisted writing about him on my blog because he gets irritated if I step on his toes. For a 13 month old he can be a little feisty.

However, I wanted to share with you my perspective of our walk in downtown Seattle the other night. We had gone out to dinner with the ActiveRain crew to say goodbye to Jorgen. Jorgen is our lead developer on the Localism project and lives in Lawrence Kansas. We had him in town for a week and he was flying home the next day so we were having dinner to see him off. As 13 month olds often do, my son was getting a little restless in his high chair so i swooped him up and we headed outside to stretch it out a little bit.

He's been walking for about 3 months now but still acts like a drunken sailor on occassion. So when we got outside, we are standing on 3rd and Union in downtown Seattle. It's about 9:00pm (way past his bedtime) and I set the little guy down. Right away he takes off down the block. It's the normal hustle and bustle of a downtown street at 9:00pm on a monday evening. There are people walking by themselves, lost in their iPods, there are groups of people walking and laughing and chatting. There is the occasional shady character passing asking for change.........

The thing that struck me as odd is that my son had the exact same reactions to the people on the streets as I was having internally. He wasn't looking at me (so my body language or facial expression wasn't influencing him), he was focused down the street on wherever he thought he was headed. But each time we would pass a group of people, if I was thinking internally that the person looked a little shady, my son would stop, turn to find me, and hug my leg with a look of "you got my back, right dad?"

If the group of people we were passing was a group of three women (or anyone with a  chatting and laughing, he would just walk right in front of them and flash a big huge grin, caring less if they planned on stopping or tromping right over the top of him. Of course, in every instance, the people would stop and engage him and he was happy as a clam. (it borders on disgusting......he is such a little attention fiend in public)

How the heck does a 13 month old little boy have the intuition to know what he should and shouldn't be concerned about?

Jon is convinced he is going to grow up to work with the FBI or the CIA.........at the very least, maybe he'll follow in Grandpa's footsteps and become a Seattle Police Officer.

(Is that how you spell swag?)

A few months ago we hired an awesome graphic designer. He was toiling away at the massive compound one mile from our office in Redmond WA where his talents were being sucked from him. (yes, that compound, that company, that Redmond WA). You have seen some of his work on the new localism and the New new localism.

His latest project has been to design a Localism/AR land rush T-shirt. I'm not at liberty to show you the design just yet, as it is TOP Secret. However, I am at liberty to let you know:

Every ActiveRain member that sponsors a minimum of 5 communities/cities on the day their state Land Rush takes place will receive a free Localism/AR T-shirt.

(for members in the states/provinces that went Monday, or Thursday in WA, and may have sponsored one or two more just to get the shirt, you have all day today to get your total to five)

This is the first time we have produced anything like this. What can you do with your new Localism/AR T-shirt? The possibilities are endless..........

• You could wear it......I know, I know....how boring.
• You could use it as a flag to surrender to the British
• You could tie it around your head in the last mile of your marathon to keep the sweat out of your eyes (or like me, in the first 100 yards of your 100 yard dash)
• You could send it back to us, have us autograph it, then burn it as a sign of your frustration at not having 'that great post' you wrote get featured
• You could cut the sleeves off it, cut a few hole is the back and rip it off in your next backyard wrestling match ala Hulk Hogan (that one was for you Sardi)

I'm serious, the possibiities are endless!!!

Yesterdays Land Rush went better than we anticipated. Our members secured over 1300 of their favorite communities. It was very exciting for us to see there are people out there that are starting to understand our vision for Localism. Jorgen, the lead developer on the project, is now on to programming his butt off to add the cool tools and features that will truly make Localism the World's first Neighborpedia and give you what you need to engage and connect with your communities.

I want to personally thank everyone that participated yesterday and last Thursday. Your support is not lost on us, we appreciate it more than I can put into words. Thank you!!

On the day that your State is available for sponsorship, here is how you will go about claiming your communities/cities.

Step #1 - Login on Localism.com

In order to log in to Localism.com you will go to Localism and then navigate to any state, county, city or community page. You can do this by clicking on a featured city or community or by typing in your state/county/city/community into the search box. Once on a page other than the home page, you will see the 'Log in' link on the top right. You can also go directly to https://localism.com/login

Once you get to the log in page, you will log in with the same user name and password that use to log in on ActiveRain. IMPORTANT: If you use an upper case letter on your ActiveRain user name when you log in, DO NOT use any caps when logging in to Localism. LOCALISM USER NAMES ARE IN ALL LOWER CASE.

Once you are logged in, you will see your picture in the top right hand corner and you will know you are logged in.

Step #2 - Enter the 'Sponsor a community' area

After you are log in, you will be redirected back to the page that you were on when you clicked the 'Log in' link. From there, you will look back up the top right hand corner of the screen and find the 'Sponsor a community' link.

You can also access the sponsor a community area directly by typing in https://localism.com/sponsor after you are logged in.

Step #3 - Drill down on the area you want to sponsor

When you enter the sponsorship screen, you will see a map and three drop down menus. The Map will show you what states are currently available. The first drop down menu is the state level, then the county level, then the city level.

Start by selecting your state from the drop down menu (give it a second or two to load your list of counties), then select your county from the drop down menu. Once you have selected your county, you will see a list of cities appear on the right hand side of the screen.

If you are able to directly sponsor your city. It will say 'claim' next to it. If your city is over the 40,000 population mark according to US Census daya (as outlined here) it will say 'not available', at which point you will need to select it directly from the drop down menu in order to sponsor communities within that city.

Step #4 - Pick your City or Community

Depending on if you intend on sponsoring a city (if you are able to sponsor it directly) or a community will dictate how many of the drop down menus you will need to use in order to get your area to come up on the right hand side. If you can sponsor your city directly, you will simply click the claim button next to the city. Once you click the 'claim' button, the button will turn yellow and now read 'pending'. At the same time, that city will be added to your 'checkout' cart. (in the example, I have claimed 3 cities and they all appear in my 'checkout' cart)

At this point, if you wanted to jump into a particular city and claim communities, you would just select the city from the drop down menu. The cities you have previously selected will remain in your 'checkout' cart. This is IMPORTANT!! You can jump around in the interface and select cities or communities in any area by simply selecting the appropriate drop down menus and maintain whatever you have previously selected from other counties or cities.

**IMPORTANT: Just because the city/community is pending, does not mean you have secured that city/community**

(Please see "Step #6 - Strategy" below for a more detailed description of securing your cities/communities)

Step #5 - Checkout and secure your city/community

Once you have selected the cities and/or communities that you are interested in, you will proceed to the checkout portion, contained on the same page.

At this point, you will enter your payment information and click 'Buy now'. Once the next screen loads, you will have secured the areas you were interested in and be redirected into the 'my account' screen. This screen will have a 'Billing history', your stored 'Account information' and a list of 'Account services' which lists the particular cities/communities you have sponsored.

Now you can click the 'sponsor a community' link at the top right of the screen to go back into the sponsorship interface. You can also begin writing your descriptions by clicking on the 'write a region description' on the right hand side of the screen under 'Sponsored Communities'. I will be writing a more detailed tutorial on writing descriptions shortly and will link to it when it's complete.

Step #6 - Strategy

At the point that you have selected the cities/communities that you are attempting to sponsor but prior to checking out, the button next to those cities will be yellow and say 'pending'. THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU HAVE SECURED THEM. Once you complete filling in your payment info and click the 'buy now' button you will have secured them.

So.......what happens if you spend ten minutes selecting your areas, have amassed 20 cities/communities and go to check out and someone else was quicker than you, selected only two cities/communities, but they were the two of the same selections you had made, took two minutes and hit the 'buy now' button and checked out? They will have secured those two cities/communities. When you go to check out, you will secure 18 of the 20 you wanted. The other two would go to the other person because they checked out first.

This is where the strategy comes in. I would suggest that you consider what are the most vital cities/communities to you and be prepared to secure those areas quickly, then come back and secure additional areas. The more time you spend before you checkout, the higher probability that someone else could potentially secure a city/community you were interested in.

The second time you come back to make selections, your billing information will have been saved and you will be able to checkout much quicker.

Step #7 - Practice

Right now, you can go to Localism.com and test to make sure you can log in. You can also go the 'sponsor a community' link and play around. Even though Washington is the only state, you can get comfortable with the interface. You can even select some cities/communities to see how that process works. You can select a few, then jump to a different County/city and select a few from there. This will give you a good understanding of what to expect the day your state is available. As long as you don't enter your credit card info, and hit the 'buy now' button, you will be just fine practicing.

To Find out when your state will be available and more specifics on pricing and other information

Go to my previous post by clicking here