activerain: Forever is composed of nows.
- 07/14/10 07:19 AM
"I don't feel comfortable about committing to ActiveRain, or any other platform that I don't own. What if ActiveRain gets bought by Google or they change the price or terms?" First off, thank you Harj Gill for bringing up this issue and addressing it in your own blog post today. I'd like to echo your statements, and add some of my own. "With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson We are in the midst of the worst housing recessions in history. The actual job of selling real estate in today's (67 comments)
activerain: What is ActiveRain?
- 07/25/09 01:32 PM
Intermixed with the daily struggle of running a company that is grasping for revenues, in what seems like a never ending attempt to bridge that last little gap to profitability, I am blessed with inspiring messages from the members of this network about how ActiveRain is impacting their lives. My most recent inspiration came from an article authored by Russ Ravary and the accompanying comments on it. Whenever I am in a certain mood, and read one of these posts, I am reminded that ActiveRain is something greater than just a business. I am elevated above the grind-level view of daily operations, (124 comments)
activerain: ActiveRain Mission Statement: Help us create it
- 01/24/09 12:15 AM
I asked our team to come up with a mission statement today. Although they were not very happy with the short deadline, on a Friday no less, they all pitched in and came up with some good ideas. Now I am taking these ideas to our membership to help us refine what we currently have and hopefully eventually derive at the perfect statement that crystallizes where we will take our network.
The only parameters that I established was that it must be shorter than 30 words. Here are some of the possibilities our team came up with: 1. ActiveRain is (72 comments)
activerain: ActiveRain site issues fixing stuff (official post thingy)
- 04/16/08 06:16 AM
Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work. - Vince Lombardi - At times over the past few weeks ActiveRain has been slow and even sometimes unresponsive. I want everyone to know that we know about the problems and take them very seriously. Our members invest themselves to create content with the hopes that it will eventually reach their customers or other industry professionals. It is our calling and responsibility to ensure that we maintain the platform so (70 comments)
activerain: ActiveRain business insight - Tribe Management
- 01/30/08 11:05 AM
I used to get asked all the time, "How is ActiveRain going to make money?". However, since the HouseValues investment things have slightly changed; now everyone is eager to tell me how ActiveRain is going to make money. The funny thing is that most people's understanding of ActiveRain's value proposition is wrong. Most people tell me that the value of ActiveRain is in our member's content. That is false. Although the content on ActiveRain is valuable to it's members, I do not view it as a primary value to ActiveRain Corp. At least in the sense that none of our planned revenue (25 comments)
activerain: ActiveRain secures $2.75 Million Series A minority investment
- 01/21/08 04:28 AM
When we first set out to create ActiveRain, we wanted to bring the real estate industry together in a way that never existed before – a way that many thought impossible. What we imagined but never expected was the impact a community like this would have on its members. Since our launch in June of 2006, we have been marked by two extraordinary achievements: our exponential growth and how we accomplished it without any institutional funding. We never budged from our pledge of free membership -- which now extends to over 65,000 real estate professionals. And we’ve steadfastly maintained open access (167 comments)
activerain: AR's dirty little traffic secret
- 11/02/07 03:09 PM
You hear it all the time, "ActiveRain really doesn't have a lot of consumer traffic.". Well at least I hear it all the time. Usually I don't offer too much of a rebuttal, I just shrug and offer a little crooked smirk. However, in celebration of hitting over 1 Million visits to the ActiveRain.com domain name for the first time last month, I think it is time to write a short post and set the record straight. Although I can't definitely state exactly how many of those 1 million + visits were non real estate professionals, I believe I can deduct a (102 comments)
activerain: Old ratings are gone. New rating system to come!
- 10/20/07 09:15 AM
As many have noticed, we removed the ability for our members to rank posts based on a 1-5 score. We decided to do this for three reasons. Very few members used it.Not effective due to lack of use.Confusing. (is 1 best, or is 5 best) Instead of a 5 point scoring system, we are moving to a one point scoring system. Press the "Share" button, and that's a "1"... don't press it, and it's a "0". The "Share" button does the following: Give's the post a "thumbs up" rating. Saves the post to your <publicly viewable> "shared folder". Adds your name to (72 comments)
activerain: What AR means to it's members
- 09/30/07 08:32 PM
I read a comment left by Missy Caulk yesterday that has had a profound impact on me. "I kept having dreams ( seriously ) about AR selling to Homegain. Now anything with r dot com, et all.....is a nightmare !" AR has always been significant and deeply meaningful to me, as it is the culmination of much of my life's work (and likewise for Matt). I knew (and have greatly hoped) people like AR, I just didn't grasp until more recently how significant it is to them. (40 comments)
activerain: Our Commitment to ActiveRain Members
- 09/27/07 11:34 AM
Back in April we drafted a blog post titled, "ActiveRain’s Weltanschauung". The philosophies in this "living" document are things that ActiveRain members can count on. We took the creation of this document very seriously. It was created to act somewhat like a bill of rights, for our members. As long as the ActiveRain community is alive and vibrant these philosophies will be honored. That is not something that we are willing to compromise on. Our members are the core of our existence, the guiding light by which our decisions are made. We deeply respect that relationship. Please read through the Weltanschauung again, (44 comments)
activerain: ActiveRain WINS Most Innovative Media Site - Inman News !!!
- 08/03/07 08:59 AM
"The award for Most Innovative Media Site went to ActiveRain Real Estate Network, the largest online social networking site for real estate practitioners. Launched a little over a year ago, ActiveRain had grown its membership to more than 30,000 individuals working in the real estate industry. The site represents a new era of real estate media in which more and more participants create the content and conversations being published online." Link to full article - Password protected after today WAHOO!!! :) (62 comments)
activerain: ActiveRain Traffic Graphs
- 02/26/07 04:08 PM
ActiveRain is a vital and growing network. Since inception we have grown by an average of 5% per week and it doesn't look like the growth is slowing down! We believe the more traffic we can drive to ActiveRain the more business our members will generate from the site. The second graph down represents traffic sent by each of the search engines. February's numbers represent only through today (Feb 26th).
(37 comments)
activerain: ActiveRain Focus Group - New Feature
- 02/12/07 12:18 PM
Late next week we are working towards a beta launch of an exciting new ActiveRain product. It will be our first attempt at making money and we would like to work with 10-12 Rainers to help us design and test this product. We are looking for a cross section of our users; new members and long time members, young and old, very active and not so much, high and low tech. You get the idea. If you would like to be a part of this group please leave a comment on this post. The focus group will likely involve one conference call (82 comments)
activerain: ActiveRain - behind the curtain
- 02/01/07 01:28 PM
The "Raingods" have been relatively quiet lately so I wanted to give our Rainers a little behind the scenes update regarding what we are working on and thinking about. Please consider this post as just a little more reliable than gossip. Blog Dashboard: This page should change a lot over the next couple months. It is much a work in progress and we really don't like it very much as it is now. We are working to make it more relevant by tying in some type of groups/associates display, and more prominently feature good Localism content. Top Bloggers: We miss this list as (65 comments)