Matthew poses the question "Do people really "search" for things on the internet any more?"
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Readers of our column know that we called the beginning of the end of search engines some time ago, when we noted that Facebook and MySpace had already started to generate more ad views and targeted traffic than Yahoo and Google. Unfortunately, Microsoft didn’t seem to have read our post, and went ahead with Bing. Microsoft calls it a “decision engine” and it certainly works differently than the traditional search sites. Yet technology improvements aside, none of the  search engine players have considered the basic question: Do people really “search” for things on the internet any more?

I feel bad for REALTOR.COM. Let me start by saying that I like REALTOR.COM – I really do. They’re a hard working bunch that puts lots of time, energy and effort into promoting other people’s products. They aren’t always perfect – yet they keep trying, and trying, and trying. And they do have the number one real estate destination on the web – so they are doing something right. But for long? This week they announced their their latest round of new features for the website. Too bad it’s still fairly clear that REALTOR.COM is destined to fail. Why? Because one group of people hates the site most of all: The REALTORS themselves.

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Listen to this blog entry by clicking the play button above. You can also click the podcast icon to listen in your default mp3 player. Been having a great discussion with the fellow over at 4REALZ.NET over the new REALTOR.COM Home Estimator tool just released – and quite quietly, we might add, since even we techhies missed the press release (so we suspect the public did too…. and about half the REALTORS who don’t even know REALTOR.COM exists…)