Toms Skyline Design has developed and bundled a couple of custom plugins to compliment this theme. You have the option of purchasing the theme by itself, or you can purchase the theme and the plugins together, or you can always get the theme now and purchase the plugins separately later.

The delay in releasing this theme and the accompanying plugins was because the first version of the theme had been designed to be compatible with WordPress 2.9.2. However, at about the time it and the associated custom plugins were near completion, a newer version of WordPress was released … WordPress 3 Beta. There were a number of changes in the new version of WordPress and some of the prior code was deprecated. Also, efforts were being focused on another project that was just beginning at that time; which meant there was no time to validate the code in the theme and make any necessary adjustments to make it compatible with the new WordPress 3+ versions. So due to the release of result of WordPress 3.0 and the resulting changes therein, the theme was not released in the summer. Earlier this month I started reviewing the code, made some necessary adjustments and fixed a number of little bugs, too.

As referenced above, the Realty One Theme is available by itself or can also be purchased along with a bundle of custom plug-ins to facilitate listings, require visitors to login to view all or portions of the site, integrate with a comprehensive list application (phpList), as well as, being able to integrate the list application with email blasts that take advantage of sites that require visitors to login. For reference, phpList is an Open Source application that is free to use. NOTE: It does require an intermediate to advanced level of skill and understanding of PHP to fully set it up and integrate phpList with WordPress. Once setup properly both applications can be used on the same site and play well together.

Click to View Realty One Quick View Screen Shots Gallery

Read All the Details About the Realty One Theme on the Theme Description Page …

Realty One Theme Now Only $29.00

Its Another Portland Skyline

Also, several months ago I converted this site over to a WordPress site and also have my old Rants, Raves & Insights blog up and running on this site, too; notwithstanding that I have not posted to it in almost forever it seems. What I noticed was that I had grown tired of the theme I had been using and decided to build a new WordPress theme from the ground up. You are looking at it. I call this WordPress theme, Skyline Two. Website design, coding, Photoshop design and slicing, Flash design and a bunch of PHP coding all go into developing something like this.

This is the second WordPress theme I have built from scratch in the past few weeks. You can see the other theme at Portlands Foreclosures. I also created a landing page for them too. Check out the “Coming Soon” link on that site to see a Real Estate Listings mockup with a nifty Flash intro.

Speaking of Flash … if you haven’t clicked on the PLAY INTRO link on the header image above … do so now. That’s another Flash intro that I am using here; because I Flash adds to a site, but an entire Flash Driven site is not so good for most sites, because Flash still is not as search engine friendly as standard XHTML and CSS driven sites. Nonetheless, Flash still looks cool and adds some pizazz to a site. In fact, I have recently put together a couple other sites that include Flash banners. Check out Just Settle My Debts and Renegotiate My Home Loan websites.

Rather than run on a bunch on this post, I will keep it short by saying that I have also been doing some social media marketing with Facebook and Twitter, some online classified marketing, developed some landing pages, tying some of them to lists and autoresponders. I also put together a few ebooks and done a little bit of work with Joomla, too. I will write more later to update the site.

Since there are no exit polls for Twitter users I am not sure how Nielsen quantified their data. Nonetheless, compiling data is part of what they do. So, I imagine they had valid data. From all the debate back and forth on the topics, it seems that limited factors are being associated to Twitter’s dismal retention rate; which some choose not to accept or question. One of those factors is that some people are just too clueless to get it; and another is that Twitter is too difficult for some people to grasp; or a combination thereof. In other words, if you are a Twitter Quitter it is probably because you lack intelligence. That may not be the best PR approach, but who am I to say.

From what I have seen, I see other issues factoring in to the large number of Twitter Quitters. Let me point out that this is speculation; because I do not have any way to quantify the data. First and maybe foremost, if you do have an issue, Twitter simply does not provide support. Their biggest support feature is a forum. However, support from Twitter is essentially non-existent. Twitter users may complain of the same issues for months and those complaints are virtually ignored, or in some instances, they simply say the issue has been resolved. From a customer service standpoint, you simply cannot ignore customer issues and expect them to go away. Let me clarify that.. you cannot expect the issues to go away. You can expect the customers to go away. Another negative is that Twitter appears to be a breeding ground for MLM programs with some incredible claims; of which, some cannot be supported, or are clearly false, or could be the basis to get your account deleted after using some of their tools or applications. Without regulating the dissemination of this type of content, what happens is that Twitter users are inundated with hundreds of repetitive MLM-hype tweets. I imagine that some people simply get tired of it. I have also seen complaints about receiving unwanted porn. The same applies here. These two examples represent only a couple scenarios. To address some of these type of issues, there is a process to unfollow someone. You can opt to block other users. However, processes do not always work; and sometimes basic functions do not work for various users. There appears to be no fix for these issues when they arise. When these processes and functions do not work properly, Twitter fails miserably on addressing these type of customer complaints. Allowing itself to be exploited and failing to handle customer issues will only continue to contribute to high Twitter Quitter rates; consistent with your projections about the unlikelihood of Twitter’s long term sustainability.

On the flip side, I believe that if MySpace were to add a similar method of mobile messaging they would recover from their 31 point dive and blow Twitter out of the water. Facebook has already added mobile messaging. Time will tell how that impacts their growth and sustainability.

Now that I have posted this, I see that a mildly different version of this post is awaiting moderation on the Nielsen site. For some reason, my post did not appear when I submitted it. Oh well, it has not yet been reviewed and accepted yet, either.

There are numerous social networks where your message(s) can be seen. Visibility is important; however, you want to be visible in the right marketplace. Rather than spending time blasting your message and ads to the wrong market, or to thousands of others whom you are competing with, try to locate social networks appropriate to your target audience. This methodology employs the same tactics as keyword usage and SEO/SEM. Broad based keywords will have the effect of generating more traffic than narrowly based keywords. However, narrowly defined keywords will generate higher conversion rates. Being more specific and less generalized in your targeting is an important factor to consider when preparing and delivering your message.

Types of Networks

In addition to the well-known multi-purpose networks like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter; depending on your product, service or niche, consider employing vertical markets, social bookmarking sites, recommendation engines, social shopping networks, horizontal markets, virtual worlds, photo sharing and video sharing networks, mobile networks and if appropriate, international networks.

Of the more hotly discussed social media networks, Twitter is so hot now due in part to the fact that it transcends the multi-purpose market and encompasses the mobile empowered network. Even though the majority of the social network options do not share this empowerment, they can nonetheless, be valuable to your campaign(s).

To keep this post short, I will list some of the many other social network options in a soon to follow post. Go ahead and subscribe to this blog so you do not miss out on valuable information and important news.

Notwithstanding the huge dip by MySpace, let’s examine these numbers more closely to afford ourselves an opportunity to view a different perspective. The MySpace users clearly overshadowed the Twitter users time spent on each of their respective sites by over 1600%. One reason for this is that the Twitter population appears to be fairly transient, with many users giving it a try and then abandoning it after a month or so. Thus, they have been dubbed as “Twitter Quitters” This is not the case with Facebook and MySpace users. Statistics show they have a much higher loyalty rate.

A few others in the top ten included Blogger, at the number three slot, Tagged.com in fourth, and LinkedIn was in eighth spot. So, over the next year, it will be very interesting to see where the big dogs in social media stand.

Fox hopes to be able to sub let the property to someone else. Good luck on that one.

Apparently, Cricket does not support five digit codes. In fact, I read a post from about eight months ago, when a customer contacted Cricket to ask about making their phones Twitter-friendly. At that time, they did not know who the customer was talking about. Well, eight months later and they still do not have a friendly relationship.

Ping.fm is free to sign up and free to use. You can use it for updating your MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and other accounts, too.