Have you checked out the "Community" page of the new Inman site yet? You can join a group (or create one) and start discussions or pose questions on topics you're interested in learning more about.

Here's a good example of how it can work.

Stacey Pfeifer, posting in the "Technology, Tools and Tidbits" group, asks "Do you Twitter and how is that working for you?"

The practical uses of Twitter -- which allows you to keep tabs on other users who post text messages about their everyday activities and thoughts -- might not seem obvious at first. You could probably a few days monkeying around with it and not see much of a point to it. It's fun, but what else can you do with it?

Stacey wanted to know how real estate agents might use Twitter, so she put the question to fellow members of the "Technology, Tools and Tidbits" group.

She got some good feedback -- and a link to a detailed blog post on the topic by Victor Lund.

Lund suggests that brokers use Twitter to "communicate en masse to all of your agents" in real time, announcing "important reminders, price changes, rate changes, new listings, sold listings, trainings, meetings, events, etc to all of your agents with one message. It can, in effect, act like a company 'Intranet' that delivers messages to each of your agent's phones in real time using text messaging."

Stacey also found another blog post by Joel Burslem, who suggests using Twitter to listen to your customers. Burslem shows how you can use another site, TweetScan, to do keyword searches and see what Twitter users are saying about Redfin, Zillow, or whatever you're curious about.

If Twitter is "a real-time, real-world glimpse into the minds of your customers," as Burslem says, the Community page of the new Inman site lets you pick the brains of your colleagues.

If you decide to Twitter, here's some help in figuring out what to do if people ask you whether you've joined blueteam or greenteam.

We're happy to announce that the beta version of the new Inman.com is now open for public viewing at beta.inman.com.

So pull up a browser and come on over to see what we've spend the last year working on. Very soon, we'll be replacing the current Inman News site with this new site.

The new site gives Inman.com a clean and fresh look that highlights our industry-leading real estate news coverage, consumer advice columns and our online video, audio and social media content.

The new site also brings together new Community Contributors and a real estate blog network of the Web's top real estate destinations that will give you the very best daily opinion and business intelligence. In that spirit too, all of our archives will abe available to all our readers.

The new Inman.com is built on a powerful community platform that lets you interact with, comment on and add your voice to all the important stories and issues of the day.

So have a look and send us your valuable feedback to beta@inman.com.

Rudolph D. Bachraty III of Sellsius fame has joined Trulia as "social media guru." Bachraty told Inman News today he is "100 percent" with Trulia and is no longer involved with the Sellsius blog or real estate portal. He also said he will maintain his broker's license but won't actively broker properties. Sellsius co-founder Joseph G. Ferrara said he will continue to crank out posts at the Sellsius blog and maintain the SellsiusRealEstate.com listings portal.

Other big real estate companies, such as Move Inc. and Zillow, have hopped on the blog-wagon, too, snatching up (at least temporarily) big-name bloggers like Dustin Luther and Vanessa Fox (see Inman News).

Bachraty and Ferrara say today's announcement is proof that blogging opens doors.

Blogs started earlier this century as isolated Web properties without any concrete notion that they would eventually become media properties. As blogs like TechCrunch and BoingBoing and their traffic attained journalistic cachet and start to imitate media brands like Forbes or NYT, lights suddenly flickered on the new Madison Avenue. Ad Networks are the New Dot-Coms (New York Times, Nov. 7, 2007):

"In just the last two days, Martha Stewart Omnimedia, BuzzMetrics and ZoomInfo all said they would start ad networks. Most significantly, Facebook is preparing to start one that draws on the information it has about users."

Brand name marketing arrives for batches of blogs that comprise the ad networks. Blog networks aren't new, but their brand names for the most part aren't recognized by the public. Martha Stewart and Facebook can leverage their popular brand, as can the blog networks now evolving within brands like Forbes and NYT. The recent $1.5 investment in Curbed.com marks the first foray into branding a real estate blog network that will roll out across American cities. NYT concludes:

"Prediction 1: We’ll see dozens more ad networks announced in the next six months.
Prediction 2: 95 percent of them will be gone in two years."

--Pat Kitano, Transparent Real Estate

A couple of interesting blog posts on how to use some social media applications effectively cropped up today:

What Can You Do With MyBlogLog: Tips from 18 Members (Online Marketing Blog)

How To Write Kickass Twitter Posts (Whatsnextblog)

Cribs, a real estate application, launches for members of the Facebook online network.

Inman News reported earlier this month about LivePads, an application that allows buyers to advertise the types of homes they are searching for and for sellers to promote their properties to their personal network and through their extended networks on the Facebook site.

The Cribs application allows Facebook users to post properties and search for properties.

Applications are launching at a rapid-fire rate on Facebook (about 100 per day), which has about 47 million active users.

But how big is the appetite for real estate searches within online communities such as Facebook? There are many property-search Web sites populating the Internet -- do users of social and business networks want to view or post properties as a part of their networking experience or will this be an unwelcome distraction? Do networks run the risk of becoming too crowded by users, and too clouded by competing apps?

Mike Parker, of real estate consulting firm Blackwater Consulting Group, told Inman News he is unconvinced that people will use Facebook to buy homes.

He also references an article in the Oct. 20 edition of The Economist, called "Social Graph-iti: There's less to Facebook and other social networks than meets the eye." That article suggests that "social networks lose value once they go beyond a certain size," and quotes Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley forecaster: "The value of a social network is defined not only by who's on it, but by who's excluded."

I was elated to find myself on Inman's list of 25 Most Influential Real Estate Bloggers 2007 released last week. While lists like these are destined to create Monday morning quarterbacks, I take them as an opportunity to learn what others are doing, and how I can apply it to my own craft.

Business Week released a similar list recently. The 25 Most Influential People on the Web. I found 16 out of the 25 listed had a direct result on how I've built Lenderama. I also think it's fascinating to read about the latest efforts of some of these pioneers.

On the subject of Monday Morning Quarterbacking, where's Craig Newmark?

--Todd Carpenter - Lenderama

Writing about a "Confectioner's Delight" of a Berkeley, Calif. Victorian on Redfin's San Francisco Sweet Digs site back in March, blogger Tracey Taylor noted another "painted lady" down the street. In the window was a sign, "Don't buy 2122 Ward," referring to another home down the block.

"Another intriguing discovery - and completely mystifying. I would love to know what that’s all about," Taylor said at the time, posting a picture of the sign on the blog.

Today, 2122 Ward St. is the subject of a cover story in the latest edition of the East Bay Express, the free alternative weekly paper, which describes (among other things) how Zillow has been enlisted in the campaign to deter potential buyers.

The story goes into great detail over a dispute over the property, which involves allegations by the home's former owner, Jim Hultman, that he lost it after Fairbanks Capital Corp. took over servicing rights to his loan and foreclosed on it -- without proper notice, Hultman claims.

Without admitting wrongdoing, in November 2003, Fairbanks agreed to pay $40 million to settle allegations the company failed to post borrowers' payments, charged unauthorized fees, and used dishonest or abusive tactics to collect debts (see Inman News story).

Although Hultman is making similar allegations, he told the Express he opted out of the settlement, because once it was divided up between 300,000 homeowners, it only amounted to less than $200, on average, and he didn't want to give up his right to sue Fairbanks (which now does business as Select Portfolio Servicing Inc.).

At least one neighbor is sympathetic to the former owner's charges that he was cheated out of his home, allowing Hultman to post signs in her yard warning prospective buyers against purchasing the home because it was "stolen by fraud" and other alarming details, such as an allaged lack of gas service on the property, a bad foundation, and a sewer line that needs replacing.

The current owners -- Loren and Jeff Toews, former NFL players who invest in real estate -- tell the Express they are none too thrilled at being stuck with the house, which they purchased in 2005 for $635,100 at a courthouse auction.

Loren Toews, a former Pittsburgh Steelers lineman who's pictured in the story sacking Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach during Super Bowl XIII, told the Express he and his brother had the misfortune of being the highest bidders.

"We happen to be the easiest dog to kick, because we bought the house. But (Hultman is) kicking the wrong dog," Toews told the weekly.

A Zillow.com user, "jimshouse," has uploaded two photos of the house that are the only pictures accompanying its profile on the valuation site. The pictures depict the house spray-painted with graffiti reading "STOLEN PROPERTY -- LOREN TOEWS PITTSBURG HOUSE STEALER."

Another local paper, the Berkeley Daily Planet, ran a story in April that described police as "clueless" about who was responsible for the graffiti. The pictures were still up on Zillow as of Wednesday evening.

SAN FRANCISCO -- People are increasingly media multi-taskers - That means it's getting harder to get people's attention because it may be very divided. People may be surfing the 'Net while watching television and talking on their cell phones, for example.

Safa Rashtchy, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray, who spoke at the Real Estate Connect SF conference this week, said community, communication and entertainment are colliding. The result: "Communitainment." The distinction between communication and entertainment is no longer clearly defined.

"Communitainment is an emerging trend that will partially replace other forms of content consumption," he said. Text-messaging a pal has an entertainment value, just like watching television, he said, so new forms of communication and media are taking time away from traditional media such as magazines or television, he said.

"Consumers are now in charge. Your success or failure is only a click away," he said. That means a new paradigm for marketing and a heightening need to be adjacent to where people are looking for information.

While there are opportunities presented by these changing times, there are also threats to the old ways. For example, "The music industry, as we know it, is dead," he said.

Rashtchy stated in a "User Revolution" report released in March (see related Inman Blog item here), "Like many major social trends, the changes will not happen overnight and we expect the User Revolution, which has just begun, to last several years before the new regime is fully established and the old statues have all been toppled over."

So it sounds like the challenge is to become the .MP3, Napster, iTunes and iPod of the real estate industry, and to avoid becoming the CD, LP, 45 and 8-track?

It seems like "Facebook" has appeared in just about every blog I've read over the last few weeks. The site is clearly blowing up, and we've been using it to try to connect people who are attending Real Estate Connect in San Francisco in a few weeks. (Connect group is at this link.)

Another real estate application has been created for Facebook junkies -- this time from Point2. The company says it's aiming to help users organize their Facebook networks around neighborhoods and cities, while streaming property listings into these neighborhood applications.

Though Point2 hasn't officially announced it yet, the application has more than 450 users, according to Brendan King, Point2's COO.

At the neighborhood level, so far there's nothing there but tumbleweeds for my 'hood. But for all of San Francisco, I was able to browse listings streaming in from Point2.

The company has a discussion thread going on Facebook for feedback.

To add it to your profile, click here.