As I was finishing up my previous post on the future of information and communication, and having just read a number of other posts, such as Jeff Belonger's very poignant post on the current $8,000 tax credit / downpayment controversy and the rapid dispersal of misinformation, I wanted to follow up the thought with some commentary on the position we find ourselves in today in terms of the speed and ease with which we can disseminate information.

When I take a listing, I can spread the word like wildfire through email, blogs, Twitter, real estate websites, syndication, social networks, and other such resources, which can be a good thing. In the same way, news (good or bad) ignites the Internet (and our cell phones / PDA's) with the latest.  In the fast moving world of micro-blogging and SMS, there is no "proof" from the publisher to review before publication day.  Word travels as fast we can type and hit enter.  Even spell check is a thing of the past . . . in fact we deliberately mangle the English language and spelling to shorten and speed up what we are doing even more!

Unfortunately, once we hit "send", take-backs are hard to do.  The initial comment, report or . . . rumor, is forwarded, re-blogged, and re-Tweeted.  It is now a fact . . . distributed around the world.  Even a simple joke or disparaging remark on Twitter or Facebook can be picked up and repeated before there is time to hit delete, and regardless of the original intent. 

It is imperative that we exercise caution.  If we are going to relay information, we need to be sure to at least verify, or offer a caveat that it has not been verified, before passing it on.  Even when we are the originators of such information (such as our own listings), we need to double-check before submitting . . . once it is out there, we lose control and are unlikely to be able to track down (or remember even), all places on the Internet where it can now be found. And we need to be careful in what we say publicly AT ALL TIMES.

Like many of you, I am dealing with retracting my hasty announcement to buyers regarding the $8000 tax credit (fortunately, this is a defensible position as I simply forwarded a link to the announcement on the REALTOR.org media page itself, and didn't try to explain or elaborate, but still . . .).  I have found myself deleting comments on FB and blogs to try to head off a potential issue . . . yet sometimes it is too little, too late.

As mentioned in my earlier post, the future trend appears to be swift, direct communication from source to targeted end user, without a middle man. We now have the power of self-publishing in our ends.  We need to ensure that we also fulfill the role of self-editing.