How I Can Save Dow Jones Big Bucks

Free Advice for a Giant... I often look at the real estate dot-com graveyard and say, "Hey, couldn't you have sent me a little bit of that money?"  After all, Comro, Cubitz, iBuilding, OurBuilding, RealCentric, RealtyIQ, Redbricks, Zethus and others must have burned through hundreds of millions of dollars of cash.  Or maybe I should just provide a public advice service for new ventures.  And why not start with some (unsolicited) advice for Dow Jones?  That media giant needs help with RealEstateJournal.com, its recently launched real estate portal, which offers "the latest news and trends in commercial real estate, in addition to property listings..." 

So I go to RealEstateJournal.com.   Oh-oh.  The default home page has a picture of a house!  Hello. ... Suggestion #1: Eliminate any reference to single-family property from your site.  Culturally, there is negative synergy between commercial and residential folks. ... Then I click the "Property Search" button and go to LoopNet's database featuring "144,000 quality listings from more than 160 commercial real-estate organizations."   But guess what?  All the information that I will see is at least a month old!  That's because only LoopNet members ($39.95 per month) can access current data. ... Suggestion #2: Disclose to visitors that the information is dated, and that they will have to pay for current market information.

So I click the top headline (October 12), "Pulling Lessons from the Trade Center Rubble."  Nice article, and there are good links to related stories.  But the article has no date!  (Turns out the article was originally published in the Wall Street Journal on October 10, 2001, under a different headline.)  In fact, none of the articles posted by Dow Jones or its information providers contains a date. ... Suggestion #3: Require all information posted to be dated, so readers will know if it was written a day ago or months ago. ... That's my three cents. 

Spread the Word! ...  Blast your brand around the real estate community by sponsoring a Dispatch.  Interested?  Check out the Advertising Info link at the bottom of the PikeNet home page.   Send e-mail or call me at 415-485-6700.

--Peter Pike / ppike@pikenet.com