Blogger Removed from NCAA Baseball Game for Live Blogging (via CNET): Courier-Journal staff blogger Brian Bennett was removed from an NCAA baseball game by officials who told him that "blogging from an NCAA championship event is against NCAA policies". CNET author Daniel Terdiman hit the nail on the head when he said,

"It's understandable if sports organizations like the NCAA want to control access to video of their games, but it's hard to see how they can expect news organizations to keep from reporting the news as it happens.  And when they do, it makes them look like they are stuck very, very far in the past."

Why Real Estate Agents have Good Reason to Fear the Web (via Techdirt):  A study released by two economists from Northwestern University shows that home sellers in Madison, Wisconsin who use real estate agents do not get higher sale prices for their homes than people who sell their homes by themselves.  Apparently, Madison is home to a robust for-sale-by-owner website (FSBOMadison.com ) that allows people to circumvent real estate agents and successfully go it alone.  Authors on TechDirt and in the New York Times conclude that for-sale-by-owner websites legitimize real estate agents' fear of the web.  I think, however, that the success of this website is that real estate agents should expand their use of the web for marketing and outreach rather than shy away from it.  I found this report interesting given the relatively new popularity of real estate websites.

Google Gives Advertisers More Control (via CNET ; also see HULIQ): Google is changing its AdWords program to allow advertisers to see exactly which sites their ads appear on and to run placement performance reports, which will show advertisers performance metrics for each site where their ads appears.  These changes are an effort by Google to give advertisers more control over their ad campaigns and to provide more transparency to advertisers.

I am currently in the midst of the incredibly frustrating process of finding a new apartment here in DC. As I become more and more involved in this process, I am realizing that finding an apartment would be much easier if real estate and property management companies used the internet better….or if they used it at all. Below are the top five reasons real estate companies need to get involved with the world of Web 2.0.

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Here's a riddle for you: What do the Internet and the real estate market have in common? 

Answer: they're both eking all they can out of "Web 2.0" hysteria. 

Recently, we've written many entries explaining the Web 2.0 craze and how it has affected everything from social groups to newspapers to politics.  What we haven't discussed yet is how the Web is affecting the US real estate market and the way everyday people buy their homes.

As in many other industries, the Web is helping home buyers and sellers alike cut out the filter of the media and other top-down information and marketing services.  With the emergence of real estate websites and blogs, home buyers and sellers can throw away the classified and real estate sections of their newspapers.  They can forget the phone number of the local real estate agent.  And most of all, they can take an active role in finding the home of their dreams by themselves. 

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