I recently donated to Redeem Haiti and got a nice, HAND WRITTEN, thank you note in the mail. Thank you for taking the time to send a thank you via postal mail!!

I’m moving out of my current house at the end of the month (I’m planning to be a nomad for the next 6 months), and have changed my address in a couple places already. Well, I went home to my parents house today to help them with some remodeling and there was some snail mail SPAM from Clear offering $25 4g internet waiting for me. It’s no secret movers are a lucrative audience to reach for marketers as the chances are very good they are in the market for new services to go along with their home and will open their checkbook for those services. I know the reasoning behind companies selling that information is that it generates additional revenue and that they don’t think people will be able to figure out who sold their information given the range of companies that have access to your personal information. But consumers are not as stupid as you think. Bank of America and Paypal are the only two places I’ve changed my address information thus far, so one of those two companies sold (or “shared”) my personal information to Clear. But here is some news for Clear (and any other companies buying my personal information from these companies) — my parents already have internet and I’m not moving there; please stop sending me SPAM in the mail.

There’s no question those companies have the legal right to sell my data per their terms of use, but this is not about that. It’s about trust. Even though I’m not entirely sure who sold my information, both companies just lost my trust, and I’m seriously considering abandoning both of them. I get that everyone is struggling and companies need to generate revenue…but selling or “sharing” personal information is NOT the way to do it if you want to maintain your long term brand.

#FAIL on them for selling my personal information.

Yesterday evening, I had dinner at Sun Dried Tomato with Jim and Lorraine Marks and their friend Brad (a lawyer). We had just started discussing the impact social media is having on businesses when a man named Bill walked up and introduced himself to Jim, saying “Hi, I’m here because you recommended Sun Dried on Twitter” (here’s the actual Tweet). Bill’s waitress had asked him how he heard about Sun Dried and he mentioned that Jim Marks recommended the place. The waitress replied “Oh that’s funny, Jim is sitting over at table 5″. Talk about timing…

The people engaging with social media are not just “internet people” who never venture out of their homes (some of my friends give me a hard time about my “internet friends”); they are real people and they are making real purchasing decisions based on their social media interactions.

It took me 2 hours to get though LA tonight. Lame.

[Photo via All American Patriots]

Andrew Mattie of Diverse Solutions helped me a bit this evening with thinking through the next version of SeaMO this evening and we spent a bit of time experimenting with Pods (a plugin for WordPress) as part of that process.

Pods sits on top of WordPress and allows you to add and display your own content types and I have to say it’s an awesome piece of technology (from my understanding) that can accomplish a wide range of things. My coding skills are not quite good enough to know how to build something cool with it at the moment, but you can be certain I’ll be thinking about what that something cool may be over the coming days and weeks. Though I’m drawing a blank at the moment, I’m sure a cool real estate specific feature will pop into my head at some point soon. If you are a WordPress techie reading this, have you built anything awesome with Pods yet? If so, what did you build? If not, get busy!!

Wow, this is incredible — Google has customized a snowmobile to capture “street view” imagery from this year’s Olympics. Take a look at the video below — and if anyone knows how to get me the job driving the snowmobile around, let me know

And yes, I know this is the 2nd post in a row referring to that company they call Google. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

I thought Google’s Super Bowl ad– called “Parisian Love” — was very well done (it has actually been on YouTube for 3 months according to Eric Schmidt).

…please read this post by Charlie O’Donnell. It’ll be well worth your time.

Due to Brad Coy’s tweet, I just read the following article on ProBlogger – I Fight Authority and Authority Always Wins. (And What IS Online Authority Anyway?). It’s an interesting read including many perspectives and I urge you all go spend a few minutes reading it. As to the question “what is online authority?” — here is what I would say:

Online authority is showing up at the top of Google’s search results for your targeted niche. Whether we like it or not, people will take the people who show up at the top of search results as the authority on a given subject. But that doesn’t mean they trust those people, it means they deem them knowledgeable and worth listening to. Authority is not the same as trust, but the two terms are certainly related. If you are trusted by your audience AND produce content relevant to your niche, then I have no doubt the backlinks necessary to show up at the top of search results will follow over time, and hence you’ll have online authority (some niches being more difficult to crack than others). The only way I will trust someone is if I’ve met them in person a few times, followed and learned from them for awhile online, or if someone I completely trust trusts them — but I won’t trust someone just because they show up on top of the search results.

What’s your definition of online authority?

Bill Gates announced that the Gates Foundation will donate $10 billion dollars to the fight against a number of illnesses including AIDS.

One word – AWESOME

For those in Seattle and interested in helping the Haiti effort, there is an event tonight at the Pike Brewery you may be interested in. From the SeaMO blog:

When/Where: January 28th, 6pm-9pm at the Pike Brewery, 1415 First Ave Seattle WA

What: A Benefit to support the work of one of Haiti’s most well-established economic development organizations as they play a key role in emergency relief and long term reconstruction efforts.

Who: Hear from Melanie Howard, the Secretary of Fonkoze’s board of directors and from Charlene Balick of the Grameen Foundation as they describe the current situation and their organizations’ efforts to hasten relief and recovery.

Plus: Live music from Sunday Evening Whiskey Club

Cost: We are suggesting a $20 donation at the door, with all proceeds going directly to Fonkoze.

RSVP at our Facebook Event Page

It goes without saying Fred Wilson is my favorite blogger and I highly respect the work he’s done in the VC industry. Every entrepreneur should read his blog in my opinion. Anyway, here’s the video from his interview with NYC 3.0 where he’s asked several questions about entrepreneurs and what he’s looking for from a VC’s perspective:

Fred Wilson talks trends, advice for startups from Vadim Lavrusik on Vimeo.

[via A VC]

This Friday is my last day at Zillow. I’ve spent the last 4 years with a fantastic team innovating in the real estate and mortgage industries. It’s been an incredible experience and I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished. So many people go through life hating their jobs, and I can genuinely say I loved (the vast majority of) my job. I’m extremely thankful for that, and frankly, wouldn’t have stayed 4 years if I didn’t enjoy my job. Of course, you’re probably wondering what is prompting me to move on. This was certainly a decision I wrestled with long and hard and did not make lightly. There were of course numerous factors that went into my decision, some personal and some professional. At the end of the day, I just needed a change for the sake of change. I’ve traveled extensively both internationally and domestically but have never really “lived” anywhere outside of Seattle. That’s going to change.

Over the past 4 years, I’ve worked with so many fantastic people, both internally and externally, and have built some incredible relationships that extend well beyond business. I’ve learned volumes from colleagues David Gibbons, Spencer Rascoff, Diane Tuman, Liam Lavery, and Amy Bohutinsky (among many others). Update: Michael Dougherty and Jeff Somers, both no longer with Zillow, should also be included in that list. Yet with a primarily externally facing job, I’ve learned just as much from those outside the friendly confines of Zillow; individuals such as Mike Price (who by the way needs to get on WordPress), Kris Berg, Jay Thompson, Ines Hegedus-Garcia, Jeff Turner, Eric Stegemann, and Jim Marks. And honestly, please don’t take it wrongly if I didn’t mention you here; if I had to name everyone, the list would go on and on (and on and on) and I’d never finish this post.

What’s next? For the answer to that, all I will say is that traveling internationally is part of my 2010 plans (no surprise there). I will be staying on in a consulting role for Zillow.com. Outside of that I’ve been discussing various opportunities with a number of parties, but will wait until I flesh out those ideas to completion before sharing details.

Thank you to everyone, both at Zillow and externally, for all the wonderful memories and opportunities presented to me over the past 4 years. Everyone has been great to work with, but I have to extend an extra thanks to David for all the guidance he’s given me over the past several years. Thank you to Rich and Lloyd for starting Zillow with the vision to bring transparency to the real estate and mortgage industries. Without them, obviously none of this would have been possible. I’m still confident in the direction the company is headed and it goes without saying that I wish Zillow and all my colleagues there the best of luck going forward, and will do whatever I can to help them succeed.

There is so much more I could say, but I’ve purposely tried to keep this post short in fear of this becoming a novel. I’ll continue to keep people updated with my whereabouts and career plans here and on Twitter. If you have any questions or comments you don’t feel comfortable sharing in the comments, feel free to e-mail me (meyers dot drew at gmail).

It’s been a wild ride; now onto the next chapter in my life…

Wow, this is way too cool not to share on my blog — it’s an animation showing edits to the OpenStreetMap.org project during 2008 and is a super cool visualization.

OSM 2008: A Year of Edits from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

[via Matt Lerner]

I want to congratulate Sloane Berrent for being selected as the new MySpace Wall Street Journal Citizen Journalist for Davos! For those interested, you can read more over on her blog.

Sloane Berrent MySpace Journal Davos Submission

Sloane | MySpace Video

I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Sloane over the past year as a result of helping with her Causeitsmybirthday fundraiser for malaria and have been thoroughly impressed with everything about her. So, congrats, and have fun in Switzerland next week!! I’ll certainly be following the trip virtually!

I had to pleasure to attending Jeff Turner’s (Zeek Interactive and Real Estate Shows) session “Discovering the lost art of listening” today at Virtual RE Bar Camp. As usual when I listen to Jeff speak, I picked up a few great tidbits of information. Here are two tools I wanted to bookmark for myself for future use — Twazzup and Tweetgrid/IRC.

I’m making it a 2010 resolution of mine to become more efficient and strategic in the way I approach building relationships via social media.

We all know the United States is beyond addicted to oil; that’s a known fact. However, who benefits the most from that addiction? BusinessPundit has an article I wanted to highlight here (The Unquenchable Thirst: Taxing America’s Oil Addiction) that says:

The government profits even more from our oil addiction than the super-rich oil companies do.

Here’s the visual:

Honestly, we need to SOMEHOW cut this addiction. The world’s oil supply won’t last forever.

Here’s the latest video from my friend and former colleague Beau Lewis (his company is Seedwell) — “I’m on a Mac (I’m on a Boat spoof) ft. PC-Pain – SwitchToMac.com”

And yes, you should check out SwitchtoMac.com!

My friend sent this video to me and I thought it was worthy of sharing:

Santa is a Motha F__kin Gangsta – Watch more Funny Videos

Happy Holidays!