Tony Fantis

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Gahlord...long time no see! I absolutely l-o-v-e your investigative work. I've also been experimenting quite a bit with my own real estate (agent/broker/idx) website. My suspicion is Google is also heavily weighing the web analytics data. Since Google is interested in being relevant, they can find out just how relevant a site is by "polling" its visitors. Of course they don't poll them, but they know how many pages a visitor looks at, how long they stay on the site, and if one site has more or less visitors "abandoning" the site after the first page. So, it only makes sense that they would use all this data they collect on websites to get the public's opinion about which sites are the most popular. Popularity can be measured by raw numbers (big corporations and big websites) or it can be measured by the level of customer satisfaction (analytics). I still wonder about blogs. It seems to me that few blogs are ever really read (we have enough information overload already), and their greater purpose is (was) to attract hyperlocal web visitors. I think there are better ways to do this, but the jury is still out. I should thank Google for finally leveling the playing field. Nothing against big corporations, but it's nice to know that the little guy has a chance...finally! Best, Tony Fantis www.saltyhomes.com Fantis Group Real Estate Salt Lake City, Utah p.s. Special thanks to Google for boosting my daily visitors to 500-700 people per day. All the hard work is paying off, and I couldn't have done it without them.

Uh oh. The sky is falling again. 1. It is not against Facebook policy to put a listing on your personal page. The rule disallows people from charging money to put paid advertisements on their personal pages. (When Facebook allowed apps to appear on the personal page, they physically approved my app to put real estate listings on that page.) 2. If you don't want to give you mobile phone number, then don't give it out your mobile phone number. 3. Phone numbers are not considered "private" information in most states. In any case, third party vendors can't get your client's phone numbers through your account. It just isn't possible. But I do agree that we should treat phone numbers as if they were private. I recently presented for the Salt Lake Board of Realtors about Facebook security and Facebook relationships. The most important thing is to use common sense. When a game asks for your information ask yourself, "Does this game need my information to work?" Everyone runs their business differently. The National Association of Realtors annual surveys show that more than 70% of our business comes from people we already know. Sounds like our friends and our business may actually be mixed up in the same cake batter. For me, I'll keep my business relationships alive on my personal page. Of course, I'll still run my fan pages separately and show all my listings and solds on those pages. But when my friends buy a house, you can bet your last dollar that I'll be putting pictures of it on my page with a "Congrats!" statement. Sincerely, Tony Fantis Principal Broker www.saltyhomes.com www.hoothut.com

Great article, Andrea! Thank you for the succinct descriptions and graphics. It's amazing to think our income could change by 20% simply by changing a registration form. The extra links to multiple vendors are wonderful! Now I need to get to to work on this. A little A/B testing sounds like fun! Best, Tony Fantis www.saltyhomes.com Principal Broker Fantis Group Real Estate Salt Lake City, Utah