SubscribeToday’s Real Estate Gossip: Move.com Does A Microsoft; Foxtons Does A Countrywide
September 27, 2007
Exciting times indeed in real estate! Market woes, mortgage troubles, bankruptcies, lay-offs…
Adding to the bad news is that Foxtons, the UK-based discount real estate brokerage, is laying off 350 employees from its New York and New Jersey operations. Some have predicted that this down market will weed out the non-traditional players [see comments section], Redfin being the company most commonly named. Michael Wurzer, meanwhile, says his long-time prediction of declining agent numbers may finally be coming true.
Inman reports that Move.com, the 800-pound gorilla of the business, is being sued by Active Rain, the utterly addictive 50,000-strong online real estate community. It has been an open secret in the real estate world that Move.com was positively salivating over Active Rain’s strong viral network of real estate professionals, and that negotiations had broken off. Now the full story has come out. Active Rain’s side of the story is, essentially, that Move.com took a page out of Microsoft’s playbook of the 1990’s, before they got smacked down by some unfavorable court rulings: court a smaller company, find out everything you can about its business model, technology, and market…then break off the talks at the end and do it yourself. Move.com, meanwhile, says that nothing Active Rain showed them during negotiations was even remotely earth-shattering.
ActiveRain’s official statement to the ActiveRain community: (login required)
Members of the ActiveRain Real Estate Community,
Recently Inman News reported on a lawsuit brought by ActiveRain against Move, Inc. Of course reports of this nature raise a lot of questions, and it has always been a part of our culture to openly discuss things with our community. We would like to be able to discuss these issues more with you. However, since this is a matter of pending litigation, our counsel advises us not to comment.
Should you be interested in the positions of ActiveRain and Move, Inc. in this lawsuit, attached are ActiveRain’s Complaint and Move, Inc.’s Answer filed with the Court in this proceeding.
We thank you for your continued support and understanding.
ActiveRain members, by and large, appear to be supportive of the company, suspicious of Move.com’s intentions, but perhaps a bit concerned that ActiveRain would have considered consorting with Move.com in the first place. The delightful and ever-opinionated Laurie Manny says: [boldface mine]
Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.
How did Realtor.com/Move.com expect to become successful without us, the membership? Realtor.com has been repelling Realtors with their high prices and lack of performance for well over a year now. Free blogs – for how long? They do not rank up on the engines now on their own, they need AR to do that. What are they offering the membership that we do not already have? Ok, so maybe in about 6 months we would all acheive similar rankings to what we already have?
I think you guys at AR are fantastic, but I have to ask. Why the hell did you jump into bed with such losers to start with? If they were going to pay it somebody else would have as well.
Live and learn.
Other commentary on the same story:
- Joel Burslem at FOREM speculates that some Active Rainers may not be happy to find out they`were about to consumed by the borg, and he goes on to remind readers that the content you contribute to online communities like Active Rain doesn’t necessarily belong to you.
- Douglas Heddings suggests that full-service agents will be partying late into the night at this news.
- Stefan Swanepoel weighs in.
- Brian Brady thinks they’ll settle for $8M to keep this thing from going to court and having a California jury hear stories about cigar-chomping good ol’ boys fleecing a trio of hard-working American entrepreneurs.
- The Libertarian Jesuit Bloodhound says Active Rain doesn’t have a case. Move.com, a big, slow, and stoopid Realtor-teat-sucking monster if ever there was one, actually made a wise decision for once, and decided they’d be overpaying for what was essentially a commodity product.
Pictures courtesy of thisfabtrek.com, foxtons.com, gorillahub.com, move.com, and activerain.com
