ActiveRain's ActiveRain Channel is ActiveRain's Junk Drawer

I found more of my stuff in the Junk drawer than I thought was possible.  I don't confuse the consumer channels with professional channels but I do when talking to others here just dump stuff that should have been in Online Marketing Offline Marketing, Technology and Tools, Networking and Training into the ActiveRain Channel. 

Mike do you think this is another one in the fail column? 

• Localism photos (shut down)
  
• Editing Localism (shut down before the New Localism even started)
• Members Assigning Communities on a City Level (shut down)

because of our  "creative" spirit???

Are channels not intuitive enough?  Lots of people post a lot of consumer content to the ActiveRain Channel. 

Luke... junk in your trunk

I'd forgot Q & A.  Is it gone?  Or reshuffled?  Should I know this? I never cared for Q & A here, Trulia or Zillow...

I was an early advocate of Groups but after closing down a number because of the shennanigans... I only moderate two now... I get frustrated trying to read AR by group and I am constantly quitting groups because they are full of SPAM.

Reading Brad's first Channels post (now... yesterday or the day before I believe I missed it when it came out)and listening to a lost Rain Radio show that Brad did with Bob Stewart which was in part about Channels I am not 100% they had  nailed down what Channels  would be before they opened them up.  Brad calls the three things the most popular Topics in the channel.

Obviously that is not true. ActiveRain Channel would read

• Real Estate
• Humor
• Market Reports

I read Bob Stewart's post about Channels  a couple of weeks after Brad's post (this is back in 2008.) Bob's post is kind of the backside of channels.  I got enthused about Channels but I was still really confused.   The white board thing there is really interesting to me even if it is way over my head.

I think ActiveRain would be 100% better if people at least understood that there are professional channels and consumer channels and that unless there is a value in showing off your listings to 170 ,000 +/-   of your closest real estate friends across the country, or in sharing your market reports on a professional channel.... those should definitely be in a consumer channel. 

"Reminds me of my local MLS, where REALTORS® can't be bothered to pull plats or deeds or MLS records, so they make up their own street and subdivision names and spellings to input."

I don't think a lot of us (in any MLS) understand the value of the data.... and that spelling (abbreviations)  count very much.  The thing I have found really frustrating is subdivision names.  There are times 1/3 of  a search does not have subdivisions even though the area is very identifiable subdivisions.  Not something our board can crack down on because some parts of the MLS don't have identifiable subdivisions.

I am confused by it.... 

I commented on Bob's post in 2008 about it.... with some questions yesterday.  It is NOT very intuitive.

how is the weather?

I think for most of the network using a consumer channel when talking to consumers would be a huge improvement.  What made me start looking at this was Jay Thompson's question about why so much is Members Only content on legitimate, authentic industry (real estate)  discussions.  There is a huge chunk of ActiveRain that does not get seen by search engines.

I am very confused on some of this.  I have read and reread Brad's post and listened to the first session of Rain Radio where Bob talked about channels.

I may be doing it all wrong...

I have only been to North Carolina in the spring.  I suppose I have driven through other times of the year. Bundle up!!!  

Each professional channel tells you what is being discussed there... the Networking channel says "The Networking Channel is the channel for expanding your professional sphere and linking with contacts in the real estate business."

A lot of what is dumped in the ActiveRain Channel should probably be in the Networking Channel or if you are talking about Online Marketing it  should be channeled to the Online Marketing Channel, Offline, Technology , short sales... instead it is all dumped into the ActiveRain Channel.  We all do it.

That feature has not been offered for over a year.  Localism is a beta.  They had to remove some of the features because of abuse.  Pictures has been NOT part of Localism so long I don't remember why it was removed. 

Write a post about the photograph for petes sake. ,