The Saunders Blog

Pardon Me While I Go Tweet

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Despite its relatively brief existence, you’d almost need to be holed-up in the farthest reaches of an unwired galaxy to be unaware of the phenomenon known to billions on this planet as “social networking.”  Love it or hate it, there’s no denying its explosive growth and mushrooming influence.   Facebook, with its more than 400 million active users—half of whom log on to the site daily and remain there for an average of more than 55 minutes—will celebrate only its sixth birthday next month.  On its third birthday in 2007, Facebook boasted a mere 21 million active users spending an average of 20 minutes there each day.  Talk about a colossal growth spurt.

Today, if Facebook were its own nation, it would be the world’s third most populous after China and India.  Far from being for English-speaking users only, 70% of Facebook’s members live outside the U.S and rely on more than 70 available translations.

Social networking.  People either swear by it, or swear at it.  Either way, you can’t ignore the ability of online social networks to instantly touch the lives of massive amounts of people—around the globe—with more useful information and visual content delivered instantly than could ever be efficiently distributed via traditional paid media.

Users of Facebook post more than 60 million status updates each day; along with 3 billion photos and more than 5 billion items of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) each month.   It’s both a visual feast and an entertaining way to keep abreast of friends, colleagues and acquaintances you might not otherwise communicate with nearly as often—if at all.  New contacts are made and old friendships dusted-off as Facebook users connect with others outside their own social milieu and location, freeing them to form online communities around common interests, instead of just common geography.

Facebook is by no means the only social networking site to boast a massive worldwide audience.  It is joined in that arena by scores of other specialized sites, including Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Following January’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, global leaders launched their own secure online social network through which they can continue to convene, post new information; and collaborate among sub-groups formed at the meeting.  Dubbed the World Electronic Community—or WELCOM—the forum’s exclusive online network has about 5,000 members.

All this shows just how deep into the mainstream social networking has penetrated.  Until relatively recently online communities were remote outposts for computer geeks who hid behind anonymous screen names and not infrequent rants.  Thanks to new technologies and user-friendly interfaces, social networks have been transformed into vast public squares where millions of people now feel completely comfortable revealing their true identities, thoughts and opinions to the online world.

At Michael Saunders & Company, maintaining a clear and active presence on the web has been a top customer service priority ever since we long ago joined a handful of real estate companies in being first to market properties online in ways never before imagined.  Whereas buyers once had no real choice but to pay time-consuming visits to every single property of interest, michaelsaunders.com made it possible to leisurely browse properties online, take stunning virtual tours, review unlimited high-resolution photography; and read detailed property and community descriptions before ultimately narrowing down which properties to actually visit.   This empowers agents—among other things—to make much more productive use of everyone’s time by showing only those properties that seriously appeal to their customers.

As new, exciting and revolutionary as those early online times were, that was then.  This is now.  Today, in addition to marketing our sellers’ properties through all the traditional forms of media—such as newspapers and magazines—we constantly strive to improve the online experience at our principal web address, michaelsaunders.com.   At the same time, we participate heavily in structured online forums such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and our own company blog—thesaundersblog.com.  These allow us to maintain close, real-time connectivity with customers past, present and future.  The resulting give-and-take provides the instantaneous feedback we need to better understand, anticipate, adapt and respond to the needs of our clients, customers, agents, the market—and yes, our fans.

This is an open invitation to become the newest “fan” of the Michael Saunders & Company Facebook Fan Page where you will be regularly refreshed with newsworthy updates—at once useful, entertaining and at times provocative—on a variety of topics that will help you power-up and make the most of your next real estate experience.  Even if you are not in the market to buy or sell a home, you are invited to weigh-in on issues and events that shape our region while being among the first to preview some of its most stunning properties.

Join us too at thesaundersblog.com for additional give-and-take about the market, the company and the rich diversity of neighborhoods, communities and cultural institutions that so bless our region.  You’ll find new content regularly and plenty of reasons to add your voice to the online conversation.

You can also follow us on Twitter, where as “SarasotaRE” we regularly “tweet” brief 140-character (maximum) updates on just about anything having to do with living the good life in Southwest Florida.   Like so many other Twitter users, we don’t presume to tweet such information as what we had for breakfast.  Instead we share important market trends, and provide links of interests to our followers; and by doing so build trusted new relationships with the information we provide.

As popular as online social networking has become, its growth is merely a prelude to an unprecedented new era of global interconnectivity.  Wow!  That was exactly 140 characters.  Pardon me while I go “tweet.”