HouseValues now owns a part of ActiveRain

[RyanRE]

For those that follow ActiveRain, Jon Washburn (Co-Founder) just announced that they accepted $2.75M from HouseValues as a minority partner.

Any comments?

[SEO Nick]

Thread Moved

[RyanRE]

Nick - Thanks, I don't know what happened. Maybe just a mundane Monday detail

Back to the tread... I am NOT a fan of HouseValues and I am not sure if this will affect the amount of time that I spend on ActiveRain or not. It depends if and what changes they make. I have been spending more time in the REW forum and I am considering spending more time blogging on REW too.

[SEO Dave]

I haven't been keeping up with AR's business lately - who or what is HouseValues?

[RyanRE]

who or what is HouseValues?

Are you being sarcastic? HouseValues is a real estate lead generation company that I believe has been in business for 8 years. They are probably the biggest lead generation company in the national real estate market.

[SEO Dave]

No, not being sarcastic

I don't get a lot of time to read the forums and haven't worked with them personally so I didn't know who they are

[kensmith]

Back to the tread... I am NOT a fan of HouseValues and I am not sure if this will affect the amount of time that I spend on ActiveRain or not. It depends if and what changes they make. I have been spending more time in the REW forum and I am considering spending more time blogging on REW too.

This will actually make me consider whipping out my entire account. Delete all blog posts and market updates. HV is in the business of selling leads to agents, why help them in ANY way.

VERY BAD move by activerain, just proves they don't have the agents best interest in mind.

[kensmith]

BTW, Thanks for sharing the information...I haven't had time to keep up with AR.

[RyanRE]

Ken - You are welcome. I still participate there. I do get good link value from ActiveRain, so I am not ready to delete my accounts yet but I am not happy either. I agree 100% with you on NOT supporting lead generating companies. The news just came out this morning, so we will see how this shakes out.

[kensmith]

The "link value" is questionable, haven't tested it to see if there is still any value being passed.

Either way this will cause many agents to stop linking to AR and that alone will effect the link value. I have already removed multiple links to AR in the last hour and have others that will come down also.

Either way the best content will have to come down.