#marketing buzzwords are dumb i hate them

[grunge-mermaid]

"plant-based chocolate chips"

plant-based.

chocolate.

WTF DO YOU THINK COCOA IS? AN ANIMAL??

[firelxdykatara]

one of the most amusing things that i’ve seen come out of anti darklinas in the last few weeks is this idea that ‘oh, we’re only posting our bad faith read of the ship and why people ship it in the tag For The Kids, because children need to know they shouldn’t want these relationships irl!!!’ and it’s like... if these Straw Children are genuinely at risk of growing up thinking it’s perfectly ok for an immortal dark wizard to kill people then....... i think there’s something going on in their life that a condescending tumblr post is not going to protect them from lmfao

and frankly, tumblr is a 13+ website. no one should be on here who is under 13, and at 13, you’re more than old enough to understand that a fictional character did it too is not a good excuse for bad behavior. 13 is old enough to understand that just because two characters have a toxic or unhealthy relationship in a fictional book doesn’t mean they should be seeking that kind of a relationship out irl.

and like, i’m old enough to have lived through (with unfortunately vivid memories) the team edward/team jacob and ‘i’m just searching for my edward’ teen crazes but like... first of all, the difference is, both of them were presented by the narrative as ideal romantic partners, and in neither case was the abuse ever acknowledged. by contrast, darklina is comprised of a lovers to enemies arc and while there’s plenty to be said about the lack of nuance and care shown in his story on the page, at the end of the day alina killed him. and secondly, honestly??? like, i will talk all day about what i hated in the twilight books and the romantic relationships and how harmful it was to present an abusive relationship as The Ideal in novels marketed toward teen girls, but, at the end of the day, it still wasn’t meyer’s job to make sure that her audience grew up to understand why those relationships were bad, and i’d like to think that those teen girls grew up into women who knew what to look for in a healthy and supportive relationship and found one for themselves.

but if any of them did wind up in bad relationships, it’s not the fault of some author who wrote a handful of best sellers, no matter how bad the writing was or how ideally it portrayed abusive relationships. (and i’m not saying it’s the fault of the victims, either, but winding up in an abusive relationship is a lot more fucking complex than ‘i read a book as a teenager and thought the evil guy was hot so i wanted to date one of my own lol’)

so anyway, coming into a tag for a ship populated mostly by young adult women and older, and going ‘i just wanna make sure that any Straw Children around here know that this is a Bad Relationship uwu’ is beyond condescending and frankly inappropriate, not to mention highkey misogynistic (cause the real underlying basis there is ‘lol those silly girls couldn’t possibly decide for themselves how they feel about this fictional relationship so i must inform them that It’s Bad’)--because literally no one who is in this tag on this website for this ship needs you to tell them that. i promise you that we, as shippers, are more than capable of having complex and nuanced discussions about this ship (which y’all clearly don’t understand, because you keep throwing around buzzwords like ‘grooming’ without any understanding of what they mean and why they really don’t apply here) without your interference.

we really, really do not need people coming into the tag telling us we shouldn’t fall for some handsome immortal wizard who does bad things and kills people. no one here will benefit from that knowledge, because we already fucking know. we just don’t care! and we really don’t have to! and there are no children here that are young enough they need some random tumblr blog to ‘protect’ them! so please, save your condescension and your pretension. you aren’t saying anything new, and you are very irritating lmfao.

(and please, please, don’t go all ‘oh no i seem to have offended people uwu’ when you get replies from the people who regularly visit this tag and see through your bullshit lmfao. it happens almost every time and playing dumb is not a good look for any of you.)

[nuka-rockit]

the post about the harry styles makeup nonbinary brand STINKS of radfem rhetoric.

like yeah of course corporations are cashing out on people's identities, but the post itself is extremely sus and there are terfs in the replies

Probably didnt see the terfs in the replies cause I tend to block terfs when I spot them. I wouldnt read too much into their mere presence though, they compulsively flock to anything that has the terms "trans" or "nonbinary" or similar terminology in it to go off on their dumb bullshit

I can see how someone would read it that way, but for me personally its more about how marketing people just try to commercialize these labels. why is it a "non-binary" beauty brand? they couldve just marketed it as unisex or something, but they know "non-binary" is a buzzword now to attract attention. I doubt it is meant for enby people exclusively I'd prefer if they'd just stop trying to act like make-up needs to be gendered at all. women can wear makeup, men can wear make-up. enbys can wear makeup. Makeup shouldnt be a restricted thing. people dont need to be femme or enby to be allowed to wear it, and wearing it shouldnt put their identity into question. I got annoyed seeing that headline because they all hate on trans/enby culture until they can sell it and then its trendy

[sydney-the-patriot-blog]

I was recently engaged in debate with a user named apersnicketylemon. The user replied one last time then blocked me so I could not respond. I typed out an entire counter argument before realizing I had been blocked and Tumblr was not allowing me to reblog the post. So, for anybody who was actually following that, here is my final retort. You can find the original debate on my page.

1. Alabama is a deeply red state. For a state made up mostly of conservatives to vote a democrat into office, a significant amount of conservatives in Alabama must have voted democrat. There aren't enough liberals in Alabama for Jones to have won if only a small portion of conservatives voted for him. More conservatives voted democrat than voted republican. This is basic math. You're not stupid.

2. If the people who voted for Moore are right-wing extremists, would you also argue that the students burning their own campuses and punching people in the face in protest when a republican comes to speak at their university are somehow NOT left-wing extremists? There always have been and always will be absurd people in the world. By your logic, people like ANTIFA must also be pulled closer toward the right. Unless you're actually not interested in evening things out at all and that's just an excuse to say it's okay to try and force people of differing opinions to agree with you, which is what I suspect is actually your motivation in saying that.

3. Even the Brookings Institute (which is left-leaning, by the way, and has been bitching about this bill for a while) admitted that 80.4% of Americans will see a tax cut through this bill and only 4.8% will see an increase. The average annual cut will be about $2,140, which is not an insignificant amount of money. 2027 is a long ways away and, I don't know if you noticed yet, but the right wing is going for a full tax reform. We want to lower taxes for everyone, not just the middle class. This bill is only the first step. Give it time.

4. Don't give me that "the system keeps wealthy people in power" bullshit. According to, again, the Brookings Institute, which is, again, left-leaning, there are only three things you have to do to avoid being permanently poor in the United States. You have to graduate high school, you have to hold down a job, and you have to get married before you have babies. That's it. These things are not exactly hard to do. 72% of people born poor who follow this formula will move into the middle class before age 30. There is tremendous income mobility in the U.S. Also, wealthy people don't all necessarily stay wealthy. "The 1%" doesn't refer to an actual group of people. The 1% is a buzzword that actually means very little. People move in and out of the 1% all the time, unless they're Bill Gates. Nobody "stays in power."

5. In what world does a dozen not mean twelve? It literally means twelve.

6. I scoured the internet for 30 minutes after reading your last reply looking for some hard evidence that he stole tax money or accepted gifts from foreign ambassadors. If the best you've got is "they payed to stay at his hotel!!!" then you're seriously reaching. Again, I don't like Trump. He does stupid things. I think having foreign ambassadors stay at Trump Towers and not even having the common courtesy to wave the bill is dumb and rude as shit, but I don't think it should be considered "accepting a gift" and I don't think it calls for impeachment.

7. 21 separate accusations of rape does not mean he is probably a rapist. It means there were millions of Hillary supporters who really, really, really didn't want him to president and thought the world would most definitely explode in 2017 if he won. If I go out onto the street right now, find a hardcore leftist and tell them I'm in favor of the tax bill that just passed, I would be labeled a nazi, among other things. I don't trust any of the shit leftists say when they're willing to label anybody who disagrees with them a literal Hitler supporter.

8. Even if Trump is a rapist, which I highly doubt, I still don't support a rapist, because I don't support Trump (this is like the third time I've said that but whatever.) I don't cheer on people, I cheer on ideas. My goal is to analyze and criticize him, and every other political figure, fairly. I actually criticize Trump more than I agree with him. But when I see people spreading blatant lies about ideas Trump supports for no reason other than the fact that they don't like him, yes, I'm going to make fun of those people. Get out of lockstep with politicians. Start thinking critically about things rather than just agreeing with whatever "your guys" are agreeing with.

9. James Comey is shady as hell (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailywire.com/news/22353/fbi-confirms-comey-drafted-letter-clinton-ryan-saavedra%3famp). He was also a highly controversial figure to be running the FBI. But like I said, Trump does dumb shit and I think he jumped the gun in firing Comey. I don't think Trump wanted him to stop the investigation because he has something to hide. He's not that smart. I think he's offended almost as easily as SJW's - almost - and the dumbass thought the investigation was an attack on his character or some crap like that.

10. In the 1970's, climate alarmists were screeching about 'global cooling.' (https://www.scribd.com/doc/225798861/Newsweek-s-Global-Cooling-Article-From-April-28-1975) One common talking point for modern climate alarmists is that 97% of scientists believe climate change is man made and an urgent threat. That is patently false. (https://www.wsj.com/articles/joseph-bast-and-roy-spencer-the-myth-of-the-climate-change-97-1401145980?tesla=y) Some global warming alarmists were not able to get the results they wanted, so they tampered with the data. (https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/3/researcher-says-nasa-hiding-climate-data/ , https://bandlerblog.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/read-this-and-weep-al-gore/ , https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/11/23/climategate-2-0-new-e-mails-rock-the-global-warming-debate/#283a7ba2988d) And finally, the climate just simply hasn't been rising at a very alarming rate (http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/08/06/a-new-record-pause-length-no-global-warming-for-18-years-7-months-temperature-standstill-extends-to-233-months/) Why do leftists have to bring climate change into literally everything?

11. "Well documented by real news sources." Real news sources that are all left-leaning, some of them even wholeheartedly liberal or leftist, but refuse to admit they have any sort of bias which is bullshit because everybody is politically biased. I'm honest enough to admit I have a conservative bias. You obviously have a liberal bias. There's no such thing as a human being who is invested in politics on any level being able to maintain an objective stance. Nobody is objective. Mainstream media sources are subjective and always have been.

12. Okay, so the things Trump has done that I think are actually good: ISIS's territorial holdings are practically nonexistent, the stock market is soaring and has been breaking record highs all year, unemployment statistics have significantly lowered, he decertified the Iran deal, he acknowledged Jerusalem as Israel's capital (which was always true but now it's being acknowledged), he repealed the individual mandate which has by and large been the most hated aspect of Obamacare, and I would consider the tax bill that just passed to be a win since it's the first step in achieving a full tax reform.

13. Trump has done significantly more bad things than good (for the fourth and final time, I don't support him). But to say he's pure evil and has done no good for this country at all is a blatant lie. Every president does both good and bad things and to pretend that's not the case is nonsensical. In this case the bad outweighs the good. That does not mean the good should all be ignored. Again, I rally for ideas, policies, and individual acts. I don't rally for specific people, because to rally for a person is to rally for the bad as well as the good and I refuse to fall into such a cultish thought process. It's called thinking for yourself. You should try it, it's very freeing.

14. A large number of conservatives don't actually fail to understand freedom of speech, you just happen to be full of fresh, steaming horse shit.

It's just now occurring to me that it was probably a waste of time to link to all those sources when the OP and the OP's cult-y lockstep followers likely won't bother clicking on a single link. But in any case, thank you and goodnight.

[benrleeusa]

[Stewart Baker] Outing Col. Chepiga (or worse)

Episode 233 of the Cyberlaw Podcast

In this news-only episode, Nick Weaver and I muse over the outing of a GRU colonel for the nerve agent killings in the United Kingdom. I ask the question that is surely being debated inside MI6 today: Now that he's been identified, should British intelligence make it their business to execute Col. Chepiga?

On a lighter note, Uber is paying $148 million to state AGs for a data breach that apparently had no adverse consequences and might not even have been a breach. That's a lot to pay just to show that the company is now under new and more responsible management.

About a year too late, a consensus of sorts is emerging among Republicans that Silicon Valley needs broad privacy regulation. The Trump Administration is asking for comment on data privacy principles. And the tech giants are pushing lawmakers for federal privacy rules. But the catalyst is an increasing need for federal preemption in the face of California's new law, and the Dems who are expected to take the House will be hard to sell on preemption. So despite the emerging consensus, a logjam that lasts years could still be in our future.

The sentencing of an NSA employee for taking sensitive hacking tools home – and getting them compromised by Kaspersky – leaves Nick with plenty of additional questions about the source of the tools disclosed by Russian proxies in recent years.

Evan Abrams gives us a summary of the NY AG's report on virtual markets and cryptocurrency. Bottom line: New York is likely to pursue regulation with vigor.

Meanwhile, undeterred by NSA's inability to secure its own systems, West Virginia had embraced a mobile voting app for the 2018 election. Remarkably, despite its firm deployment of blockchain buzzwords, none of us thinks West Virginia has solved the security problem.

And in quick hits:

The GRU is taking the "P" in APT way too seriously.

A content moderator has sued Facebook, claiming that her job gave her PTSD. I think it probably did, but I doubt Facebook will be held liable.

India's Supreme Court has upheld, with limits, the government's massive Aadhaar digital ID program.

Facebook suffered a breach affecting 50 million user accounts and probably 40 million "log on with Facebook" accounts. Will we hear about more? Who knows? We're getting these facts piecemeal thanks to the EU's dumb 72-hour deadline for reporting breaches under GDPR.

President Trump says China is interfering in the 2018 elections. But unlike the Russian version, all of China's fake news is on actual newsprint.

Finally, a quick report roundup:

The EU is forcing Silicon Valley to restrict disinformation without actually defining, you know, disinformation. Probably because the EU doesn't want to admist that it thinks everything Trump tweets should be banned as disinformation.

DOJ's otherwise pretty good best practices report sadly doubles down on hating hackback. Now with added rationales!

China is back to stealing our commercial secrets, but more quietly, think tanks report.

House AI report – pro: bipartisan; con: mostly content-free.

And here's yet another set of IoT security guidelines

[garynsmith]

What the hell is Keller Williams doing? Lingering questions from the Vision Speech

http://ift.tt/2t3jGuD

Reposted with permission from Rob Hahn. Read his follow-up thoughts to this post here.

Writer’s note: Some of the early comments focused on Inman’s reporting, and my reliance on that as some kind of a flaw. I have now watched the entire speech on video. I stand by my analysis in this post. If there is a flaw, please feel free to point it out, but don’t have it be because I wasn’t present at the speech. It’s all on video, and I’ve heard everything Josh Team and Gary Keller have said. If anything, Inman was bland and downplayed the coverage.

It’s been a busy few days, and not likely to get any less busy for the foreseeable future, but I have to talk about this. As Inman reported:

Real estate franchisor Keller Williams debuted an artificial intelligence-based virtual assistant and referrals platform today, announcing to the world it has every intention of thriving in a changing industry.

“We are a technology company. No. 1 that means we build the technology. No. 2 that means we hire the technologists … We are not a real estate company anymore,” Keller Williams co-founder Gary Keller declared today at Keller Williams Family Reunion in Anaheim, California.

Obviously, Gary Keller is a freakin’ genius with a track record of success longer than my leg. Actually, since I’m not that tall, longer than James Dwiggins’s leg.

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Not everything he’s tried has turned to gold, but he’s succeeded more often than not. I have long admired Keller Williams on a lot of different levels, and I’m willing to concede that Gary and company are brilliant businesspeople.

So this announcement, and some of the language that came out of Anaheim during KW Family Reunion, is, well — confounding. I’m completely confused. What the hell is KW doing?

Either KW has decided that a fast glorious suicide is preferable to slow decline and irrelevance, KW has decided that staking its reputation on a giant lie is good for its brand, or there’s something else going on that I just can’t figure out.

Let me explain.

Buzzwords do not a product make

First of all, I’m relying heavily on Inman’s reporting from the event here. So if I get something wrong, or missed something, well, blame me for not being at the speech, and then blame Inman for being there and misreporting something.

Editor’s note: Inman reported from a live streaming video of the event. 

Writer’s note: I have the best readers. See the end of the article for links to the speech. 

But immediately after the “we’re not a real estate company anymore” the Inman article goes into a long deal about Kelle, KW’s now “Artificial Intelligence” app. Here’s the promo video on Kelle:

That’s not artificial intelligence. That’s a voice interface to dumb search, much like Apple’s Siri, which is about as “intelligent” as belly navel fuzz, or Alexa, which is scary in that it collects everything you’re saying in your house but funny as hell in how idiotic she is.

We’re a pretty long way from actual AI, even rudimentary ones. And buzzwords do not a product make.

But that’s not that important because everybody does it. Remember that we work in an industry where lighted yard signs are billed as game changers.

What is important is …

What the hell?

From the Inman article, it looks as if there are two people talking here. One is Josh Team, the chief innovation officer, and the other is Gary Keller. But here’s the extended excerpt:

For KW, that means no longer dealing with what it called “bolt-on” technology. “Bolt-on technology is anytime you use another company’s technology product that you didn’t build and own,” Team said onstage.

Bolt-on tech means being vulnerable to another company’s priorities and updates, according to Keller. Those companies also get to keep the valuable data agents generate, he noted. He pointed to the largest tech companies in the country: Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon. “These are data insight companies built on your data, which you give to them willingly. That’s the crazy part,” Keller said. [my emphasis]

“You have singlehandedly created the most valuable real estate company in the country called Zillow. They don’t create their own content,” Keller added. “It’s your data. [Real estate portals are] just using money and technology to enhance the experience so everyone wants to go there.”

I know Keller threw out the “Z-word” as red meat to the crowd, but did he really mean to bring Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Amazon into the mix?

What exactly happens if someone from Google were paying attention to this, and decides, “You know what? KW is a competitor of ours now. We should treat it accordingly.”

How fast does KW go kaput if Google decides to delist all KW-related websites and links? I mean, sure, KW will go out in a blaze of glory as the little company that defied the giants, but go out it will — quickly.

Apple? Microsoft? Is Keller Williams launching a laptop division I didn’t know about? A productivity suite? An operating system? Does KW make cellphones? Are KW agents going to stop using Facebook going forward because God only knows the amount of data that Facebook collects on them, which they give it willingly?

Oh, no, no, Team and Gary didn’t mean those tech companies. Surely not. True, they all make technology that KW did not build and does not own, but they didn’t mean laptops, the iPhone, the Pixel2, Amazon, Amazon Web Services, Gmail, Google Apps, Dropbox or copy machines.

That would be ridiculous, even though Keller mentioned several of them by name.

Surely KW meant only Zillow and the other “bolt-on” real estate tech companies.

Uh, I guess that makes sense? No, not really

I don’t understand that move either, though.

For example, Team picked on Commissions, Inc. because it’s now owned by Fidelity National, which partially owns Pacific Union, and said: “That basically means any Realtor that is using Commissions Inc. is giving their data to a company that’s competing with them if you’re on the West Coast.”

So again, what happens if Fidelity National takes KW at its word and decides that it ought not to work with KW agents because you know, KW is a competitive technology company?

There are parts of the country where not having access to FNF companies could be disastrous for one’s real estate business, you know.

Or even the hated and feared Zillow, usually the unspoken subtext of the “it’s your data!” talk, but in this case, spoken out loud and lumped in with Google, Apple and Amazon. (If that’s talking down your competitors, maybe KW execs need a refresher course on what “talking down” means, but I digress.)

Quite a few KW agents, particularly those who have large profitable teams, leverage Zillow Premier Agent leads for five-times, eight-times, 10-times ROI and then some. Sure they bitch about Zillow “selling their leads back to them,” but they’re happily buying leads on other agent listings on a wide variety of ZIP codes and making a fortune off those leads.

Is KW begging Zillow to cut off those leads to KW agents and agent teams? To what end? How in the world does that benefit their agents and teams currently cashing checks that Zillow leads brought in the door?

I’m reminded of Don Michael Corleone telling Tom Hagen, “You see, all our people are businessmen. Their loyalty is based on that.”

Maybe KW wants to force a showdown to see where its people’s loyalties lie. To what end, I’m not sure, but I’m having trouble explaining this move otherwise.

Even the little guys who KW feels like it can push around and bully: the BoomTowns of the world, the Market Leaders of the world (who is a big part of the KW eEdge platform), the Imprevs, the various other CRM vendors such as Contactually, the transaction management vendors, agent website vendors such as Real Estate Webmasters or Placester or whomever — all of those peeps now have to wake up to the reality that their relationship with KW has a definite time limit, and it isn’t a friendly partnership.

No, they have now been told that KW considers them parasites who are dangerous to the agent:

And so, Team wants to make sure that KW is the winner in the upcoming battle over technology:

And so everything we’re doing, from all of our initiatives, Labs, everyone pooling their money together and creating that fund, growing our own tech budget by … tens of millions of dollars annually.

All of that is around a singular purpose, which is to make sure we are the winner and that Keller Williams creates the solution that allows the tech-enabled agent to win and outperform the technology platforms that want to disintermediate the agent.

If you are a technology vendor today, and you read that, here’s what crosses your mind (or ought to, immediately): “Hmm, maybe I need to work with my other clients like Re/Max, Realogy and HomeServices to make sure that they are the winner, because if KW is the winner, I don’t have a business anymore. They know they’re real estate brokerages and not technology companies.”

How exactly is it good for business to create a whole legion of competitors overnight, all of whom are now incentivized to make sure you are the loser in whatever upcoming war by helping your actual brokerage competitors kick your ass as much as possible?

Finally, aren’t agents 1099 independent contractors in KW world?

And then, the article ends with this bizarre passage:

Keller vowed to adhere to a data pledge that would differentiate KW from other companies’ data practices:

‘We will always respect your data as your business and we will always allow you to take your database with you.’

This means: ‘Your data is your business, and we will never hold your data or your business hostage. If you leave, you can take your data with you, and we will not keep a copy,’ Team told Inman.

That’s good, but given that Keller Williams just spent a bunch of time talking about how it isn’t safe to give your data to a bolt-on technology company who will use that data to create wealth for itself, why wouldn’t a real estate agent apply that same logic to his relationship with Keller Williams itself?

After all, Keller Williams is no longer a real estate company but a technology company that wants you to use technology that you have not built and do not own — such as Kelle, KW Connect, KW eEdge, Keller Cloud and whatever else it will be building and owning with the tens of millions in additional tech funding?

It isn’t as if KW agents are employees of Keller Williams, who receive a paycheck from the company. In fact, agents pay Keller Williams out of their commission checks, don’t they? Aren’t they 1099 independent contractors, all of whom are supposed to be running their own businesses?

“We will always allow you to take your database with you” sounds good, until you think about why you should give KW your database in the first place unless your last name is Keller or Williams and you own equity stakes in KW.

After all, isn’t KW going to use your data to create insights that your competitors — who are literally sitting in the same office as you are — will use to compete for listings, buyers and business?

Goose, gander — you know the deal.

None of this makes any sense.

And then, there’s this …

That’s just tech vendors. You know what else Keller Williams did not build and does not own where KW agents constantly input their data to be compiled and used to create insight that benefits competitors?

The multiple listing service.

The single biggest “bolt-on” technology that the agent uses day in and day out is the MLS. KW just told all of its 175,000 or so agents that it isn’t safe to put their data into a third-party bolt-on technology that they didn’t build and do not own.

I mean, if they’re going to be dissing Commissions, Inc. because Fidelity National is the corporate parent, which means using CINC equals giving your data to Pacific Union, what the hell do they think of the MLS, which is designed to give your data to your competitors?

And if I’m one of KW’s partners in Project Upstream, I now have reason to question what KW’s endgame is in our little partnership, so it isn’t as if the Upstream folks ought to be cheering Keller on here.

I mean, look at this passage here, quoting Team:

‘We see every contract that’s written. We see every one that’s accepted. We see every one that goes back and forth negotiated. We’re seeing all of this information, so we want the ability to go back and say: “Hey agent, on this contract that you’re writing, did you know that contracts that have escrow of $3,400 or more in this area right now, in this moment in time, in the last 30 days, have a 17 percent greater chance of being accepted?”‘ Team said.

Every contract that’s written? Or every KW contract that’s written? Because if it’s the former, the MLS and the other brokers who contribute to it have to start wondering just how KW got the data on every contract written in a marketplace. Is that covered under the MLS rules?

If it’s the latter, then just how accurate could the KW one database to rule them all be? KW doesn’t have even 50 percent market share in any market in the United States as far as I know.

So if I’m a broker, I know I’m making a phone call to my MLS asking if KW gets contract and offer data from the MLS. Then I’m making phone calls to all of my transaction management vendors to see if KW is getting that data from them.

Keller Williams, whose agents compete with mine for listings and buyers every single day, wants the Keller Cloud to be this one source platform with all of the data to give its people an advantage over mine? Fine, but KW can do that without my data.

Plus, yes, the MLS as a whole tends to be a go-along-to-get-along everybody-cooperate type of an organization that would rather keep its competitors afloat instead of going after its customers, but even the MLS community has started to think about competition and consolidation over My Little Pony data sharing.

What motivates the MLS to keep thinking of KW — no longer a real estate company, but a technology company — as a part of the family instead of a real threat on the horizon and treat KW accordingly?

Of course, maybe Team and Keller didn’t mean the MLS by “bolt-on” technology. Just like they didn’t mean Google, Facebook and Apple. And they didn’t mean dotloop, which is the transaction management platform in eEdge.

And they didn’t mean Market Leader, which is the CRM in eEdge. And they didn’t mean your company, Mr. Tech Company CEO currently providing products and services to KW agents; they meant those other ones that aren’t safe for agents to use.

I’m sure that will be reassuring and compelling to tech company entrepreneurs everywhere — or not!

Relax, we didn’t mean that; it was just a pep rally

Speaking of “that’s not what we really meant,” maybe the whole thing was just an elaborate fire-up-the-crowd pep rally kind of a deal. I mean, social media afterward was full of KW agents talking about how great they are, how wonderful their company is, etc.

Maybe behind the scenes, all of KW’s technology partners (which include Zillow, by the way, whose dotloop platform is a big piece of KW’s tech puzzle) have been privately reassured.

“Hey, so Josh and Gary are going to get up and do this big fiery speech but don’t worry! Nothing changes between us. You understand it’s just a — whatchamacallit — a rhetorical device to fire up the crowd, OK? We don’t really mean what it sounds like we mean, so relax.”

That reminds me a lot of politicians who run campaigns railing against corporate greed while taking a trainload of cash from Wall Street. Or politicians doing the fire and brimstone speech talking about repeal Obamacare OMG! until they win and get into power and do precisely zilch. It’s a lot of knowing winks and nods and “You know, we have to play to our base!” game that goes on.

Except this was billed as a three-hour long “vision” speech, the centerpiece of the convention. If that’s based on a wink and a nod, sheesh, you have to wonder what else could be based on a wink and a nod, don’t you? Trust is a strong bond, but it’s a fragile thing easily lost.

And why in the world would you want to emulate a politician, of all things?

So either KW meant it, or it was pulling the wool over its people’s eyes. Neither one makes much sense at all. Down one path, KW alienates just about every company in real estate, including all of its most important current technology partners.

Down the other path, KW risks its credibility — for what? What’s the benefit here? What is the gain that justifies taking that risk?

I don’t understand it. I really don’t.

Do you understand this?

To be fair, it’s not important that I don’t understand it. Who the hell am I, after all?

It is important that KW brokers and agents understand it. So if you’re one of those, please enlighten me in the comments. What’s that all about?

Because from where I stand right now, the strategy makes very little sense. Not when KW could have just as easily said, “We’re going to work with our friends and partners to create the best agent-centered technology there is to make sure tech is adding value to you, not the other way around.”

Then bring Spencer Rascoff out on stage to talk about how wonderful KW is, how Zillow and dotloop are committed to making sure that technology aids the agent, not the other way around, and making the pledge about “your database” and all that jazz.

Hugs all around, kum-bah-ya moment, everybody wins.

Instead, KW chooses to alienate everybody, or in the alternative, risk its word on a false promise with compromises worked out in advance behind the scenes. Neither makes any sense to me as a strategist. But hey, Keller’s net worth dwarfs mine, so I’ll concede that maybe I just don’t get it.

If you do, kindly explain it to me. With small words. Thanks.

Writer’s note: A reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, sent along these links to the actual speech/presentation by Gary Keller, Josh Team and others at Family Reunion 2018. It looks like Lori Ballen took the video on a cellphone, and then posted to YouTube in five parts. I will commence watching them now. I urge you to do the same, so we’re not relying on Inman’s reporting alone.

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g4UXPAEXPQ Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upvbiI5I3_4 Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QXXaFIQuGw Part 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhsf75nHD5g Part 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOyVMuAP0do

Robert Hahn is the Managing Partner of 7DS Associates, a marketing, technology and strategy consultancy focusing on the real estate industry. Check out his personal blog, The Notorious R.O.B. or find him on Twitter: @robhahn.

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