January 21, 2008 by Joe Kennedy.

According to an article today by Jessica Swesey at Inman News, ActiveRain has secured $2.75 million in a Series A minority investment from House Values.

House Values has certainly pissed off many real estate agents and brokers over the last few years - including yours truly. They have lost a lot of money (not to mention goodwill and repeat customers) through the way they do business. It’s amazing to me that after all their layoffs, cutbacks and change in business that their investors are allowing them to invest in other (albeit related) sectors.

As far as ActiveRain, I stopped blogging there after they announced a lawsuit against Move.com. (Apparently they were going to sell ActiveRain and all the people who helped build it down the river to the Realtors). I’m pretty sure that I will be deleting my ActiveRain account after this latest news, as I know that I want NOTHING to do with House Values. HV has given the lead generation industry such a bad name, that it has been very difficult for new players with great ideas to get a fair shake from the many agents and brokers who have been burned.

What do you think? Should real estate agents still be supporting ActiveRain after they took investment from House Values?

In the end, this is going to be great news for other Real Estate Networking and Blogging sites like Wanna Network.

Posted in REALTORS, Media, Investors, Blogging, Move, WannaNetwork, Consolidation | No Comments »

October 6, 2007 by Joe Kennedy.

Since joining Active Rain a year or so ago, I’ve made a lot of blog posts and comments there and was at one time able to earn the top brokerage position in Bellevue for a short time.  Once I was found out, the folks at Active Rain and Brio decided to make sure that was not going to happen again.  I boycotted for awhile and then went back, until I was displaced still once again - once again by Brio (whose founder is also an owner of Active Rain).  I boycotted once more and then went back - until last week.

Last week it was announced that Active Rain had filed a huge lawsuit against Move.com (which operates Realtor.com). Apparently, AR was going to sell their platform (and their members?) to Move to use for a REALTOR blogging community.  I’ve had to think about this for awhile, but for now I have decided that I don’t want to be part of a group that can be bought and sold without any of my input or any regard to how the membership would be affected.

There are thousands of real estate professionals on AR.  They helped build it.  I helped build it.  AR was going to sell us down the river to make a few people multi-millionaires.  That’s fine and their choice, but my choice is to no longer contributing or participating at Active Rain.  At this point, I see WannaNetwork as a good alternative, but after the Acid Rain experience, I think that my blogging time will be spent on my own blogs - not to line somebody else’s pockets with gold.

Posted in Blogging, WannaNetwork, Personal | No Comments »

September 27, 2007 by Joe Kennedy.

In story today at Inman News, Glenn Roberts writes about ActiveRain filing a lawsuit against Move, Inc. because Move did not purchase or invest in the platform.

Move operates the mighty Realtor.com and may have been looking at Active Rain as the forum for its recently launched free blogs for REALTORs.  ActiveRain is seeking $33 million in damages.

It makes me wonder what would have happened if AR was sold to Move?  Would it have been only open to REALTORS? Would all Active Rain have to abide by some rigid new rules?

Since this sale didn’t go through, I’m sure they’re back to shopping it.  I hope they make their money, but also consider their members.

Another great online real estate group is WannaNetwork.com which will be unveiling their new platform at the NAR convention in Las Vegas this November.  What I like about WannaNetwork is that they have forums where real estate professionals can actually exchange referrals.  Check it out!

Posted in WannaNetwork, Move | No Comments »