Instagram and #CRE. What If Anything Have I Been Missing?

If you are of a certain age it's the only thing you want to look at. If you are of a certain gender it's what you use to get most of your product recommendations. If you are hardcore #CRE you may be like me and have said: “why in the hell would I get on Instagram?” But as we sit here today Instagram has over 700 million registered users. Linkedin has 500 million. Twitter comes in at 328 million. So, that's a humongous amount of eyeballs. You might suggest they are not business eyeballs. Fair point, but how many of those 700 million people occupy or use space? How about commercial real estate space? Seems as if CBRE Cush Wake think it's worth the time and effort. Now here we are in 2017 and I know Instagram has been around for a number of years. #CRE has been on and around Instagram from day 1. I get the whole branding, community involvement, employee engagement, property showing thing. I said I get it. It's a business thing. Social media and #CRE in 2017 and beyond thing. It's visual. It colorful. It's pretty pictures. Some (as in me) might ask the old age question “where do the sales come from?” Wow, have many times did I hear that question about any kind of online activity not just a few short years ago. Ironic, of course. Is it just to push more people to the main company website? How about showcasing those beautiful empty spaces? You never see one that is all trashed and weed infested. Hmmm, must not be any of those in the world. Go figure. How many pics of buildings can we see before they just become generic buildings? Here is something, is there no mystery about anything anymore or is it controlled transparency? Hell, I think I may have invented controlled transparency, or possibly hiding in plain sight, whatever term you want to call it. Why are we here again? Some interesting Instagram stats. 59% of 18-29 Year Olds Use Instagram. 33% of 30-49 Year Olds Use Instagram. That's 92% under the age of 50. What the average age of #CRE practitioner? 50+ years old male and then some. Also, the majority of Instagram users are women. Something else, 80% live outside of the US. Source: Sproutsocial So it would seem to reason just on those statistics alone there is no good business reason to spend any time on Instagram. But here I am today. Then why? And why now? I have survived all this time without it. BUT, and because I HATE FACEBOOK for what it is. Instagram gives me something similar yet easy to use and adds a visual component. It also beyond the obvious branding exercise can do what? Capture an entirely new and different audience. A global untapped audience who is just now realizing what commercial real estate is now and may be in the future. What were the stats again? Who is the audience? Who again? Look at my profile bio. Does that turn you right off? Good, you are not that audience. You are not even close. You have no idea. Instagram and #CRE. What If Anything Have I Been Missing? A whole bunch and it's all on me for missing it but not anymore. +1 Follow me or not. +1+1 How far will I take it? +1+1+1 Stay away, I dare you. Title Pic: Really, you need some form of a comment. The Evolution of REX. Prototypes, Seed Rounds, and Beta. Let's name a few shall we? Yardi, VTS, RDM, LoopNet, Xcelligent, etc. etc. and on and on. You get the picture. At the basic level, what is their function, what do they do? They provide a platform for data, your data. They aggregate that data... What if real estate professionals have not only access to data but what if that data is made available in a manner as user-friendly as possible? What if real estate teams could communicate across a portfolio no matter where they were located? The... Let's start right off with the definition of State Channels. State channels are a very broad and simple way to think about blockchain interactions which could occur on the blockchain, but instead get conducted off of the blockchain, without...