By Roger Ewing

Google Personalized Search examines your web history and assigns sites you have visited a high ranking. If you visit a particular site frequently, it will be ranked higher than sites you may not be visiting on a regular basis.  This ability is known as 2nd and 3rd Generation Search.

Amazon’s “people who bought your product also bought…” is an example of this kind of technology.  Amazon’s Jeff Bezos refers to this technology as Discovery-Based Search.

Search 4.0

Taking Amazon’s example a step further, requires a computer to get social and personal with you in the search process.

Google is pushing the search envelope.  Using your personal search history, and combining those results with search histories of people you know, as well as search histories from people you don’t know, gives Google the opportunity to finely tune your search results.  From a marketing point of view, this is powerful stuff.

The point is, Google now has the ability and the means to review your personal search history, thereby defining your individual digital stream of consciousness.

The Semantic Web

For computers to perform the tedious tasks involved in Search 4.0, images and symbols must be presented in a format that the computer can understand and evaluate.  Creating platforms where computers recognize and combine this information and then act upon it, is at the very heart of the future search process.

Computers must be capable of  processing knowledge itself.

Instead of merely recognizing text, the computer must rely on processes similar to human deductive reasoning and inference, resulting in more meaningful search results.

Discovery-based Search promises to revolutionize the information gathering process.

Home Search

In the near future, when you begin your online home search, you may be greeted by ads for homes tailored to your taste and preference.

Vacant homes may even be digitally staged, complete with furniture and decorations that you have previously investigated online.

Before Digital Staging

After digital staging

Digital staging photos courtesy of California Image Maker CIM.com

Some may feel discovery-based search is an invasion of privacy, while others will view this kind of search as a tremendous convenience. We can either embrace this technology, or hope it goes away.

Re-Posted By Roger Ewing

9:26 AM Eastern Daylight Time May 28, 2010

* IPad launches in 9 markets including France, Japan and UK

* Hundreds queue all night in London, Munich, Paris, Tokyo

* iPad shipments to reach 8.1 million in 2010 worldwide -RBC

* Amazon makes Kindle iPad app available in all countries

By Matt Cowan and Marie Mawad

LONDON/PARIS, May 28 (Reuters) – Diehard fans mobbed Apple Inc stores in Europe and Asia as the iPad went on sale outside the United States on Friday, with some shoppers having queued all night to buy one of the coveted tablet computers.

The device, a little smaller than a regular notebook computer and with an open, colour touchscreen, is designed for surfing the Web, watching movies and reading, and has been hailed by the publishing industry as a potential life-saver.  Apple sold a million iPads in the United States in the first month after its April 3 debut, exceeding the most bullish prelaunch estimates. Demand was so heavy the company delayed the international launch.

RBC Capital Markets estimated iPad’s total shipments will reach 8.13 million units worldwide by the end of the year –which would translate into at least $4 billion in revenue.

“I wanted to touch it as soon as possible. I felt real excitement when it was finally in my hands,” said Takechiyo Yamanaka, 19, who had camped out in front of Tokyo’s flagship Apple store from Wednesday evening to be the first in line.

“It’s a bit of a gut decision, an emotional decision, because it’s not really rationally justifiable,” said Anna Kistner as she emerged from the Apple store in Munich, Germany with two iPads. “It’s a lot of money.”  The iPad is now on sale in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Britain, Japan, Australia and Canada.  Prices for the cheapest, Wi-Fi only version range from $499 in the United States to the equivalent of $617 in Britain.

The buzz around the iPad helped propel Apple past Microsoft this week to become the world’s most valuable technology stock, marking a remarkable turnaround of a company that nearly went out of business in the 1990s.

CREATING A NEED

Apple now gets almost three-fifths of its revenue outside the United States, and it is counting on its base of fans who already own an iPod, iPhone or Mac to add the iPad to their collection, as rivals line up with their own tablet offerings.  Pascal Lordon, among the first in line at the flagship Apple store underneath the Louvre in Paris, said he already had all Apple’s other products and described himself as a big fan.

“The iPhone created a new need but the screen is small. The iPad is more comfortable — it has a real screen,” said the 51-year-old, who works in video editing.

Dell’s Streak tablet computer will go on sale next month in Britain. Sony Corp and Hewlett-Packard also have tablets in the works.  “I’m not going to buy the iPad now as it’s expensive. And I’m a Sony fan,” said Kengo Nakajima, a 19-year old college student who waited in line with his friend Yamanaka at the Apple store in Tokyo’s Ginza shopping district.

Amazon, whose Kindle e-book reader could be seen as a rival to the iPad, said it would be offering its Kindle iPad application in all countries where the iPad was now on sale.

Analysts at research firm Informa Telecoms & Media said they believed most iPad sales would be of wi-fi only models, citing the limited case for outdoor usage, higher prices for 3G models and the ability to tether the iPad to a mobile phone as reasons.

At London’s Apple store, a circus-like atmosphere prevailed.  “Jake! Jake! Jake!” store staff chanted as Jake Lee, a 17 year-old student who had waited 20 hours, entered.

British actor and technophile Stephen Fry said Apple had proved the sceptics wrong.

“Whenever Apple comes up with a new product, the initial response… is always negative, because no one can quite believe it can happen again,” he told Reuters.

SUPPLY CONSTRAINTS

Apple has yet to announce a launch date for mainland China, which could prove a much more difficult market to crack.  Bootleg versions of the gadget are being snapped up online and in retail malls in the piracy-prone country.  However, there is some concern that Apple, which contracts out the production of the device and depends on numerous parts suppliers, may not be able to supply enough of the device. “There’s still going to be supply constraints, but I’m expecting them to sell every single thing they can ship,” Andy Hargreaves, a U.S.-based analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, said ahead of Friday’s launch.

Retailer Best Buy said it was restricting sales at its two British outlets to one iPad per household.  Michito Kimura, a senior analyst at market research firm IDC Japan, said the test would come after the honeymoon period.  “The real game will start after ‘core users’ have the devices. I imagine a price cut may be necessary before the Christmas holiday season to stimulate demand.”

(Additional reporting by Alexei Oreskovic and Edwin Chan in San Francisco, Jens Hack in Munich and Valle Aviles in London) (Writing by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Hans Peters) ((georgina.prodhan@thomsonreuters.com; + 4420 7542 7954; Reuters Messaging georgina.prodhan.reuters.com@reuters.net))

Copyright © 2010 (C) Reuters 2010. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.

By Roger Ewing

Second and third generation search is in hot pursuit of the modern consumer.

Knowing what a buyer desires, without them actually telling you is the ultimate prize in search engine technology.

Currently, we are in the first phase of paid search, which is dependent upon matching text ads with the intent of a search query.  This is the way Google, Yahoo, AOL and other search engines monetize their business models.  But now second and third generation search models are emerging that promise to monetize the consumers clickstream in new and exciting ways.

Behavioral targeting

One example of second generation technology tracks your search and browsing history to display product results before you actually initiate a search for them.

Jeff Bezos, of Amazon, refers to this kind of search as Discovery Based.  Amazon’s “people who bought your product also bought…” is one of the company’s most profitable divisions.

Ever feel frustrated and impatient that your specific search result is not precisely on target?  Of course.  Do consumers really want to be found in the search process?  I believe the answer is a qualified YES.  A quality search result is at the top of our fantasy desire list.

The “search funnel”

According to Google, “Search Funnels are a set of reports describing the (your) ad click and impression behavior on Google.com…”

This means that Google now has the capability to see how many clicks and what different keywords were used in your historical clickstream, prior to you initiating a new search.

Funnel + landing page history + keywords + ad viewed history = Your Profile

Just in case this conversation is a bit too technical, simply put, it implies Google now has the ability to essentially read your online thoughts and anticipate your desire as a consumer.

People visiting a food site can see ads for financial services, cars or any other interest they have shown elsewhere in their online travels.

As consumers we hunger for quality search results.  The Internet will soon allow us to find the products we desire with little or no effort on our part.

What a concept!  I am in the residential real estate business.  If, by applying a simple algorithm (recipe), I can determine your home preferences, prior to your inquiry, I can present properties to you that meet your individual needs even before you begin your home search.

In the near future, when you begin your online home search, you may be greeted by ads for homes that are tailored to your taste and preference.  Vacant homes may even be displayed digitally staged, complete with furniture and decorations that you have previously investigated online.

Spinning The Gold

A plethora of “digital straw” is readily available to any public search engine.  The technology already exists to begin the spinning process. Stand by creative marketers, the gold standard for search is only a few clicks away.

Like it or not, your clickstream represents your individual online stream of consciousness.

Some will argue that is an invasion of your online privacy.  While others will say it is the natural evolution of the search process and represents a benefit to us all.

What’s your opinion?

By Roger Ewing

What Are We Searching For?

According to Piper Jaffrey, a U.S. investment banking firm, the global internet search environment looks something like this.

• 20% of all searches are for entertainment information.

• 15% are commercial.

• 65% are informational.

Much of the informational searches could easily be considered commercial.  BIA/Kelsey, a leading provider of strategic research, analysis, data and competitive metrics, indicates that 25% to 35% of all searches are local, and most of those are commercial, looking for a restaurant for example.

Interestingly, internet penetration in the United States is somewhere north of ten times the average for the rest of the world.  However, far more searches are done internationally than in the US, by a factor of about five to one.  What does this tell us?

When the entire world has complete access to the internet, Search may well become the most important activity involving humankind.

The Speed of Information

Researchers Hal Varian and Peter Lyman, two economists at UC Berkeley, calculated our total global information production for one year. In their study “How much information?” they measured the total production of all unique information channels in the world for two different years, 2000 and 2003.

Their research revealed a mind numbing 66% rate of growth in information per year.  Roughly 3.5 exabytes!

According to Wikipedia as of May 2009, the size of the World’s total Digital content has been roughly estimated to be 500 billion gigabytes, or 500 exabytes.  There is clearly no shortage of digital straw.

What’s An Exabyte?

In case you were wondering, an exabyte is a unit of information, or computer storage, equal to one quintillion or 1 followed by 18 zeros (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) bytes.

Let’s just say it’s a really big-ass number, but not as big as a googol, which is 1 followed by a hundred zeros.  Stanford graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin took creative liberties when they named their company Google.

So much for the straw in our spinning analogy.  In Part Two of this blog I will focus on winning the GOLD.

Guest blog by Stephen Roesler, Director of Social Media at Ewing & Associates Sotheby’s International Realty

What’s in your digital arsenal?

By: Stephen Roesler

Similar to the buildup of military weapons by the Soviets and U.S. in the mid 20th century, there is a hot pursuit to win the race to the top of Google. Regardless of industry, SEO (search engine optimization) is the name of the game. Embracing a marketing initiative that aims to promote exposure via organic search engine traffic may qualify as an organizations biggest hurdle. The heart of our online marketing efforts revolve around the concept of an online community. Let me explain.

If things are going ’social’ as I’ve advocated in the past, the goal then becomes utilizing our social power in a medium where the majority of people spend an unconscionable amount of time; the internet. Given that 85% of real estate searches begin online, we can assume our community relentlessly searches this diabolical machine named Google, which accounts for 65% of real estate searches alone. Therefore, we need to capture our audience on their terms. What are they looking for? How do they find it? What do they search? How do they think?

Answering these questions requires some research on Adwords and thoughtful website analytics tracking. But, that’s only one aspect of finding a community. Next, providing useful content becomes integral. EwingSIR has taken a unique approach which has doubled our organic traffic. We use a strategy that provides news to micro community’s in attempt to grow participating communities. By publishing online news that remains relevant to specific communities, we cultivate a community based on location. Not only are we highly targeted, we are personal and social. Therefore, we find specific buyers and sellers coming to our site, looking for services we offer. Not only does this community effort add to our arsenal of SEO tools, it builds an online community.

However, choosing to harness one SEO effort will only result in limited exposure. Winning the arms race requires a full scope of social media efforts rooted in a strong SEO crusade. Go forth, soldiers.

As Director of Social Media, Stephen Roesler manages the extensive blog platform at Ewing & Associates Sotheby’s International Realty. He is responsible for all aspects of the companies cascading blogosphere, including the creation of community blogs, as well as the design and implementation of social media tools and the development of strategic initiatives on the web.  He can be reached at stephen.roesler@sothebysrealty.com

49 Syllable Haiku

This winter we will capture

only perfect snow flakes.

Using great care,

we will write the Lord’s Prayer

on each one.

We will bottle the snow

in flasks marked GINSENG

and then sell them

as holy water.

Copyright © by Roger Patrick Ewing, all rights reserved.

Mr. Lazo,

Thank you for your well thought out article in the Times this morning, “Home Values Jump In January”.   As a 32 year veteran of the Southern California real estate market and I would like to offer a couple of observations regarding home values in today’s market.  Unfortunately, I believe the real estate market is extremely fragile and the recovery may be long and painful for home owners who have lost so much equity in this economic downturn.

First, as you probably are aware, we currently have a two tiered real estate market.

A conforming loan market where buyers obtain loans less than $729,751 and a jumbo loan market for loans above $729,750.

The jumbo home market price structure is still depreciating and will continue to do so until a secondary mortgage market becomes available to create a resource whereby lenders can sell the jumbo loans to third parties.

None of us see such a resource becoming available in the near future.  As a result the important “move up” real estate market is for all intents and purposes, moribund.

The conforming market continues to show strength and has probably bottomed out in terms of price depreciation for the time being.  However, an increase in interest rates, combined with harsher qualifying guidelines, and a rush of foreclosures could cause this situation to reverse itself as you correctly mention in your article.

Second, the real estate market is not immune to classic financial market behaviors.  The government has been successful in supporting the current situation through a number of incentives that you mentioned.  However, it is important to consider the entire home market as a singular unit.

Ecosystem

Each segment of the market is dependent upon the other in an ecosystem of sorts.  And just like any ecosystem, the failure of any market segment will have negative consequences for the other segments.

In other words, for the low end home market in Southern California to become permanently stable, the upper end market (where buyers depend upon jumbo mortgages) must also become healthy.

I would point out that the real estate market in our country is responsible for over 20%  of the national GDP.  Given the importance of the real estate market in the overall economy, I am surprised at the lack of understanding on the part of our leadership in Washington.

The focus for stimulating housing has and continues to be only on the low end conforming segment.

This continued myopia by leadership will result in extending the delay of a full recovery in housing and will hold back the overall economy as well.

Thanks for reading my email.  I hope to see articles in future that draw attention to the two tiered market and the importance of addressing issues related to each market segment.  After all, those who purchase conforming loan properties tend to be tradespeople and small business owners/workers.

When a real estate transaction is successfully completed, more than 25 individual vendors receive work.  This tends to be an even higher number of vendors when a high end property finally closes escrow.  At the end of the day, full employment is the key to overall financial stability.

LA Times: Home Sales Jump In January

By Roger Ewing

While local home sales activity has improved during the past six months, the market cannot be considered to be in full recovery, at least not yet.

What does this mean to you as a potential buyer or seller?

Following is a summary of the issues you will want to consider when making your real estate investment decisions.

First, The “Not So Good” News.

1.  The US Treasury is scheduled to stop purchasing mortgage backed securities in March of 2010.  This effort on the part of the federal government has been a major contributor to the low interest rates we have enjoyed.  When this program ends, interest rates will rise.  Experts have estimated that home mortgage rates may rise as much as 1/2%-1%.

2.  The government has been offering first time home buyers a tax credit of $8,000 to stimulate buying activity.  This credit will no longer be available after April 30, 2010.  Ending this program may result in a slight increase in the inventory of unsold homes.  More importantly, the end of this popular program may create some negative press which may further depress buyer’s lack of urgency.

3.  The 12.4% unemployment rate in California represents the highest rate in over a quarter century. Some economists believe the true “hidden unemployment” rate may be as high as 18% or 20%.

Naturally, people who are concerned about their job stability are reluctant to buy homes.  Unemployment must be addressed to ensure the fledgling economic recovery is sustainable.

4.  A potential surge of bank owned properties may come to market in 2010, resulting in an increase in the number of homes for sale, thereby depressing the home pricing structure.  “Given what we see in terms of the number of distressed properties that are in the pipeline, we do expect that foreclosures will mount…” said Celia Chen, senior director of Moody’s Economy.com.

5.  Lenders are tightening qualifying guidelines.  The conforming lenders such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA are all making it more difficult for buyers to obtain financing.  The resulting lack of qualified buyers will potentially result in weaker buyer demand.

Jumbo mortgages, home loans above the conforming $729,750 loan limit, are difficult to obtain because a secondary mortgage market has failed to replace the mortgage backed securities market that existed prior to the economic meltdown.

But Wait, Now The “Good” News.

1.  Home sales are improving while the median sales price is rising.   This is true even though the rate of appreciation is slow and labored.  It will take an extended amount of time for prices to rebound to their previous highs.  According to statistics produced by Case Schiller, in the last recession it took nearly ten years for prices to fully recover to previous highs.

2.  First-time Buyer Housing Affordability Index, measures the percentage of households that can afford to purchase an entry-level home in California. The index stood at 64%  in the third quarter of 2009 compared with 55% in 2008. Recent decreases in home prices and mortgage rates have brought affordability into better alignment with income levels of typical California households.

3.  The Obama administration’s $75-billion program to help troubled borrowers hold on to their homes appears to be keeping more California families out of foreclosure, but the relief may be temporary. At the end of September, 2009, about 1 in 4 homeowners with mortgages was underwater.

4.  The residential real estate market is responsible for over 20% of the annual Gross Domestic Product.  Without a solid recovery in housing, our economy will not be able to sustain a lasting recovery.  Housing is a key ingredient to financial stability and the federal government must support housing to ensure the recovery continues.

Summary

Potential home buyers and sellers are navigating treacherous water. Real estate is extremely dependent upon low interest rates and high employment.  These two important forces are competing with one another.

As the year progresses, we can expect home mortgage rates to rise. Given the depth of the economic recession we should not be optimistic about employment making a strong comeback this calendar year.

BUYERS, Consider acting now to lock in the lowest interest rate possible before the end of the first quarter of 2010.  A 1% increase in interest on a $700,000 mortgage will result in approximately $70,000 in additional interest over ten years. The question a buyer should ask themselves is this.  “Should I risk paying a higher interest rate on my future mortgage, while I wait for prices to decrease further”?

SELLERS, Consider the real possibility that prices may erode further as a result of higher inventories of homes for sale and the availability of fewer qualified buyers.  Increasing interest rates may affect the ability of buyers to qualify for larger mortgages, resulting in downward pressure on prices.

As always, prior to making your home buying and selling decisions, consult with your tax advisor to ensure your decisions are knowledgeable and well planned.  Then consult with a qualified Realtor to assist you in executing your home investment strategy.

“The dramatic drop in foreclouse activity may have been a Christmas gift to homeowners”, says Sean O’toole, CEO of Foreclosure Radar.co

By Roger Ewing

For the first time, since the loan crisis began over two years ago, banks are canceling more foreclosures then they sell.  For a complete analysis of the foreclosure situation read the full report from Foreclosure Radar here. Foreclosure Radar

Life on Moonstone Beach

is more precious at midnight-

mysterious mist.

Copyright © by Roger Patrick Ewing, all rights reserved.