Turner's Perspective

I'm a fan of Eyejot, the Eyejot This! Bookmarklet and David Geller, Eyejot's President. So, yesterday when he told me they were launching a new SMS feature, I was intrigued and immediately set up my personal Eyejot account to receive SMS text messages. But I didn't have time to test it.

A little while ago I received my first notification that someone had sent me an Eyejot message. It was David Geller, commenting on our new Instant Shows feature at Real Estate Shows. I couldn't help but share the experience.

WARNING: THIS IS A SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERIMENT.

I felt like I needed to say that. :) I have no idea whether the @nar2008 GroupTweet account will work as I hope it will, but i think it's worth the effort. And the only way to test it, is live and with a large group. 

Here's how the @NAR2008 GroupTweet for The National Association of REALTORS® Annual Conference came to be.

At the last few real estate conferences, reBarcamp, Inman, reBlogWorld, the twitter crowd used hashtags to help people keep track of events and conversations taking place. This allows you to more easily follow conversations around an event using tools like Twitter Search. While this is fine, for what it does, it still requires active involvement on your part. You have to "check in."

What I wanted was something that would allow me to be passive.

I wanted a system that would be "instant" and alert me to the events and updates of the people attending the event found important or interesting. So, text messaging seemed like a good option. The first application I turned to was Tatango. I set up a NAR2008 Tatango Group and invited a few of my closest Twitter friends to come and help me test it out. It worked, but it doesn't have the right model for this purpose. What Tatango does is allow a "leader" to communicate with the group. It is a "one to many" solution. So, it would be put to better use by someone like Hilary Marsh (@hilarymarsh) at NAR. She could use it to send out updates about changes in venues, times or event cancellations. Hilary was one of the first few to sign up to test and that account has now the NAR2008 Tatango Group has been turned over to her for her use.

The Beauty Of Social Media And Public Discussions

While publicly testing Tatango, I was followed by @deanalert. The CEO, Matt Beck, had picked up on the conversations and wanted to let me know that DeanAlert was working on a real estate specific group texting option. Matt and I have yet to get hooked up on the phone, but I will come back and update in another post when that happens.

And... while preparing for this post this morning, the founder of Utterli, Michael Bayer, followed @nar2008 and that made me realize I had not considered Utterli's recent (10/22) launch of a Group Text Widget. We had a private discussion over on Utterli and I'll share this much of his conversation with me, "You ain't seen nuthin' yet." Knowing the Utterli gang like I do, I don't doubt it for a moment. "This new app lets you send text messages to your friends (one or many) in Facebook, Bebo, and Utterli. This is the first app to bridge your friend connections on all three networks. Recipients of your text messages can receive and respond from within their social network interface or on their mobile phone."

And then there was GroupTweet.

Ultimately, I decided that I'd like to test GroupTweet. How does GroupTweet work? I'll use the text right from their website:

"GroupTweet piggy-backs on the Twitter service via the Twitter API. Setting up a Twitter group is simple:

1. Create a new Twitter account specifically for your group (e.g. initechwebdevs or smithfamily). If you want to make this a private group, make sure that updates are protected in the settings.
2. Register your group's new Twitter account at GroupTweet.com
3. Tell all group members to follow the group account you created at Twitter. Note that the group account must also follow the group members.
4. Members can broadcast a message to the whole group by sending a direct text to the group's Twitter account. For example: 'D nar2008 Just committed the latest code to the repository'

That's it! GroupTweet is constantly listening for direct texts sent to your group's Twitter account. When a direct text is received, GroupTweet instantly publishes it as a tweet from the group account. Since all of your group members are following the group's Twitter account, they will each receive the message. Easy-peasy!"

Here is a quick "tutorial" video that describes how this all came about and will show you, visually, now this all will work.

Have I piqued your interest? I hope so. Setting it up this way allows each of the followers to determine they level of involvement. You may just want to listen in using Twitter, or you may want to turn on device updates and receive text messages in real time. It's up to you. Let me repeat, I don't have a clue how this experiment will turn out. I'm hoping the members will keep the "noise" to a minimum and use the site for it's intended purpose. If we all do that, I think it will go well. Some have already begun using it to announce other social media efforts, like the NAR2008 Flickr Group.  Want to join in? Go follow @NAR2008 on Twitter. Then direct message NAR2008 during the conference to keep us all up to date on the events you find interesting or important.

I've shared some of the random messages I see on Twitter regarding REALTORS® or real estate.

Often they've been funny, or inspiration for thoughts on communication, or used to point out why it's important to use Twitter. The message below illustrates the potential power of social media and social messaging to spread messages for spreading good news as well as bad. This is someone who is in the real estate industry but appears to have tried to sell his home by himself. It also appears he's now happy with his real estate agent.

"I was trying to sell house with no realtor for 5 months. No activity. List with agent on Wed & Fri we have serious interest. Get an agent!" David Christopher.

I love Twitter. Matt Rains, of RETechBlog fame, sent me a private message on Twitter the other night, asking me to take a look at "something" he had built and to give him my opinion. That something was a text messaging widget and I liked it.

So, yesterday Matt and I met for the first time in a video conversation using Skype and he shared with me the reasons why he decided to create it. It made me smile, because his reasons for creating the widget are the same reasons why I sometimes create some tutorial videos. It's easier for me to make a video once than to have to explain something many, many times. Matt's widget creation logic followed a similar line of reasoning. He had been explaining how easily it could be done and finally decided it would be even easier for everyone if he just created a widget to do it. He was right. :)

Making it fit in the Active Rain sidebar.

So, in the conversation on Skype, I asked Matt if he wouldn't mind editing the widget a bit so it would fit nicely here in the sidebar on Active Rain. He readily agreed and a few hours later, voila, the Free Text Messaging Widget was ready to go. You can see it in my sidebar right now.

Why do I think it's a good widget?

First, it does one thing really well. It allows people who visit your page to send you a text message. That's it. Second, I know that the providing a variety of contact options will greatly increase the chance that someone will actually contact you. Communicate the way people like to be communicated with. It's that simple. Some people will pick up the phone, some will email and some will want to text message. Now you can give them that option.

You can get your free text messaging widget here.

Here's a quick video that will show you how to get it into your sidebar here on Active Rain.

Text Messaging Widget From Matt Rains from respres on Vimeo.

Matt, thanks for this great little widget!