[tattcasetle]

Realtors in the www.Scroogle.org Age

Gone are the days when agents can just talk up the market. But you have to believe me when I say "The prices can only go up", I'm wearing a suit and have a nice flashy car!

Or are they?

From a contributor to The Guardian commenting on an article about recently university graduated members of Generation Y:

"The "corporate psychological manipulation" has always been around, but nowadays with so many graduates in psychology we are far more aware of it. The newspapers, some of them, continue to try and cover up the truth but it is much harder to hide. I am sure that one reason the current housing and banking crisis is spreading so fast is that this is the first Internet recession. Estate agents can lie as much as they like, and pretend that house prices will rise slightly in 2008 - stabilise - fall 3% - fall 8% but anybody with an internet connection can quickly find that the OECD is effectively predicting a 20-30% fall, so the news cannot be manipulated so easily. Astroturfers and tabloids can pretend that anthropogenic climate change is a myth, but anybody with an Internet connection can quickly find that they are reporting the views of the unqualified, or research from the 1980s."

I have already started a thread on the New Media v Old Media wars presently taking place, but there is no doubt from this gentleman's comment (above) that the shysters and fraudster salesmen of any product, who for the preceding decades have made a living providing a service often with more than just a hint of dishonesty, can no longer operate as easily.

Its now the time when your grandmother can advertise her villa on Goa for sale on every appropriate internet forum in New York, London and every other place in the world that has a wireless or wired connection.

What predictions do you hold for this new age?

A newfound disdain for realtors, and other persons in positions of "authority" when it comes to selling goods, homes and just about anything else - is that the natural consequence?

Or will people continue to act like sheep?

[meteeratymn]

I think some people will continue to act like sheep. Speaking for myself, I find I can make better medical decisions, and size up doctors more easily.

[golozhopik]

Doctors rage at being rated online

GPs fear a new website allowing patients to judge their competence will expose them to abuse and vendettas

• Denis Campbell, health correspondent
• The Observer,
• Sunday July 13, 2008
• Article history

Hoteliers, restaurateurs and artists have known the tension for years. They unveil their work and then stand back to await an avalanche of either praise or derision from the public, the critics and, more recently, an army of bloggers.
Now the nation's doctors are about to be exposed to the same sometimes arbitrary process of internet democracy. A website launching today, iwantgreatcare.org, will let patients rate and review every medic who has treated them. Doctors are still one of the most respected groups of professionals, but for how much longer?
Leaders of Britain's medical profession are furious about the site, which they claim will expose them to abuse, libel and even personal attack. It will carry everything from praise to vitriol about every one of the country's 40,000 general practitioners and 120,000 hospital doctors.
The doctor behind the site claims that letting the public give medics individual reviews and rate their performance - as they already do routinely with restaurants, West End shows and books bought through Amazon.com - will help to bring about higher standards of care.
But the British Medical Association, the doctors' trade union, claims it will leave their members exposed to malicious vendettas and lead to libel actions over critical comments, which the website admits it will not vet before they are published.
Iwantgreatcare has been set up by Dr Neil Bacon, a hospital doctor for 18 years, until recently as a renal specialist at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford. He previously created doctors.net.uk, which is by far the most popular social networking site for Britain's clinicians. The website, which restricts access to its 155,000 members, has already been used by doctors to post a stream of comments attacking Bacon's latest project.
But he has hit back, arguing that the threat of negative feedback on his new website will force doctors to listen more to patients, explain themselves better and improve the treatment they provide. It would help the public to choose which doctor to go to when they are ill by seeing if previous patients were satisfied with their experience, added Bacon. He said he had held talks with the Department of Health, medical royal colleges, patient groups and the General Medical Council (GMC), the doctors' regulatory body, while planning the site.
It asks patients to answer three questions, by giving ratings from one to 100, about a doctor who has treated them or a relative: 'Do you trust them?', 'Did they listen to you?' and 'Would you recommend them?' They can then post a 'review' of the doctor. Only reviews which use swear words will not be put online. 'There will be no editing or censorship of any reviews unless they are profane, libellous or scandalous,' said Bacon.
'It's a bit like Amazon reviews. Patients will use us to rate clinicians. We are producing a credible, independent forum for that discussion.
Dr Richard Vautrey, vice-chairman of the BMA's GPs committee, said he was very concerned. 'There's a significant possibility of it being used in a malicious way, leading to doctors finding themselves under incredible stress and worry, and leaving them open to potential abuse from individuals with a vendetta. It would be of great concern if any doctor was put in jeopardy through a malicious campaign, maybe through viral email, to attack or undermine a doctor at a hospital or GP's practice, which could easily happen.'
Patients who have suffered a major trauma such as a bereavement can be impossible to placate and sometimes look for a doctor to blame, said Vautrey. 'It's very difficult to find yourself in the firing line through no fault of your own,' he said. 'It is unfair that patients posting comments are anonymous and that the information is subjective, with no evidence to support particular statements.'
Doctors.net is not the only chatboard buzzing with opposition. 'It does open up the possibility of anonymous hounding and persecution of doctors by malicious or mad patients, with no possibility of redress, and is deeply worrying,' wrote one critic at the ferretfancier blogspot.
But patients' representatives and some doctors welcomed the website. 'This information is long overdue. Why shouldn't patients, taxpayers who fund the NHS, have this information, just as they would do research before buying a washing machine?', said Katherine Murphy of the Patients Association. 'It's going to cause uproar because doctors want to feel protected. They like to think they're the best, whether they are or not.'
Four hospitals, including a major London treatment centre, and around 600 doctors have agreed to use the comments posted on the site as a way of monitoring patients' views about themselves and their colleagues, said Bacon.
Professor Chris Bulstrode, of Oxford University, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon and member of the GMC, said: 'This website is a great idea and will put the cat among the pigeons with the medical profession, which is just what's needed. Doctors will feel threatened, and rightly, as one or two will find their trousers round their ankles.'
Dr Sam Everington, a GP in east London, said: 'Feedback from patients, both positive and negative, is helpful. But I fear this website is going to go too far and scientifically it's full of holes. The self-selecting nature of the comments and those making them makes it very arbitrary, open to bias and not truly representative, in the way that a Mori poll about the Prime Minister would be credible.'
Dan Tench, a libel lawyer with Olswang solicitors in London, said that iwantgreatcare was taking a risk in publishing potentially defamatory claims against doctors. 'The site is sailing a bit close to the wind,' said Tench. 'A patient could write, "This doctor killed my mother through his incompetence" and the website would then have the agonising choice of whether to publish it or not.' Doctors have shown themselves ready to launch libel actions to protect their reputation, he said. 'The people running this website should be cautious and ensure that their procedures for taking down a comment that's been complained about work well.'
The Department of Health declined to comment, but Health Minister Lord Darzi, the architect of recent radical reforms of the NHS, is understood to believe the website will prompt doctors to provide better care.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jul/13/nhs.health

[Rexaviennatutr]

I have met the coolest people online.

Not only did I meet my hubby through a dating site (true!) I have met both renters and buyers through wirednewyork.

The availability of Internet data means many people will bypass realtors, and that's okay.

There still will be a core of people who think where they live, and what they pay for it, is too important a decision to make without using a professional. While a bit of the real estate volume will drop away, Web tools make it easier for pros like me to conduct the rest of the business, meeting our clients and getting them the right solutions.

With WebMd, you can diagnose yourself with a 24-hour sore throat and fix it, but you still go to a doctor if you need to have your tonsils taken out. And thanks to the web, that doctor has more information about tonsils on hand than ever.

And, yes, I see the humor in that I used a very painful analogy.

ali r.
{downtown broker}