Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

Real estate recession? Gasoline prices above $4 a gallon? Election year madness?

It can only happen in the United States of America, which is about to celebrate its two-hundred and thirty-second anniversary of independence, on July 4th.

Americans are a nation of hard-working, ingenious people that maintain one element unique around the world: united, they are able to share, create and prosper in any kind of weather, under the protective shield of the All-American Dream.

Simple ideas become entrepreneurial forces that catapult individuals and companies to the top of their industry; combined with the ingenuity possessed by people that are given the opportunity to prosper, it’s an unstoppable force.

Enter Nick Spanos, NYC real estate broker who also happens to be a 3rd generation Greek. Nick owns bAPPLE.com – short for “Big Apple” – a company that deals in premium, multi-million dollar real estate based off SoHo, NY.

I met Nick at TRAFFIC / Orlando in May; he’s the type of guy that looks at you in the eyes and can tell whether you are a bullshitter or not. In the late 70′s, Nick had a prolific encounter with Steve Jobs at the Homebrew Computer Club. Apparently, Apple eventually used one of Nick’s sinus plotting functions in their range of computers; Nick’s affection of geometry led him to create his own computer board. Later on, in the 90′s, Nick began investing in virtual real estate – domain names – and his current 10,000-strong portfolio contains both generics and traffic names, which Nick monetizes using software that he created.

But Nick Spanos is a strong player in the non-virtual real estate field as well. Nick’s ambitious expansion from his Union Square offices to the bAPPLE, Inc. headquarters in SoHo – the premium location in the heart of Manhattan next to world-famous luxury stores – is only an illustration of his commitment to meet the demands of his extensive clientèle, which includes real estate brokerage in Florida, Panama and Greece.

While the US remains in recession, Nick turned his focus to the market that presents increased opportunities: European buyers. With the Euro currently trading at $1.57, cash-laden investors that visit the US and its metropolitan center, New York City, are able to get more premium real estate for their money. In fact, most of bAPPLE’s buyers pay hard cash, something unheard of for the mortgage-driven Americans. And that’s great news for Nick Spanos, who was invited by CNBC to present his successful story this morning, to viewers around the globe.

Click here to view Nick Spanos on CNBC

So what is it going to be, real estate or virtual real estate? Land that we can walk onto and live on, or domain names that we cannot touch but we can equally develop, monetize and resell? In today’s economy, diversification is the key, and Nick seems to have discovered the best combination, successfully delving in both!

As kids, we used to play that game called “broken telephone“. Other names for this game included, “operator“, “grapevine” or “pass it down“. It involved a chain of kids that would relay a short but quickly spoken phrase, rather silently. By the time the phrase reached the last kid, the phrase would be completely distorted and in many ways funnier than the original one.

The following is excerpted from the movie Johnny Dangerously:

Lil: Get this to Johnny on the grapevine: Vermin is going to kill Johnny’s brother at the Savoy Theater tomorrow night. Got it?

Polly: Got it.

Polly: Vermin is going to kill Johnny’s brother at the savoy theater pass it on.

Prisoner: Vermin is going to kill Johnny’s brother at the Savoy Theater tonight. Pass it on.

Prisoner: Vermin is going to kill Johnny’s mother at the Savoy Theater tonight. Pass it on.

Prisoner: Vermin’s mother is going to kill Johnny tonight at the Savoy Theater. Pass it on.

Prisoner: [gibberish]

Prisoner: There’s a message on the grapevine, Johnny.

Johnny: Yeah, what is it?

Prisoner: Johnny and the Mothers are playin’ “Stompin’ At The Savoy” in Vermont tonight.

Johnny: Vermin’s going to kill my brother at the Savoy Theater tonight?

Prisoner: I didn’t say that.

Johnny: No, but I know this grapevine.

This morning, the news in the domain grapevine had it that a domain name, Israel.com, had sold for $5.88 million via Moniker’s auction platform. Before noon was over, blog after blog and forum after forum had passed along the information, adding their own little twist to the story. Some said the buyer was an Israeli tycoon, others said it was a Jewish woman investor from a large corporation in New York City. Others, preferred to ponder how much Israel.mobi would sell for.

It turns out that the domain was not sold after all. So much for the rich Jewish lady from NYC; if you know her, I’d like to get her number.

The point is, today’s media possess powers that by far exceed those of the traditional media. In the old days of centralized points of information, the newspaper with the false piece of news would frantically retract all the issues and the poorly-paid paperboys would deliver a fresh edition of the news. On the radio or the tv, an announcement would be made, correcting the mistake – obvious or not – and everything would be put in place, more or less.

After news of the alleged sale broke out, the Moniker people scrambled to issue frantic statements that no such sale had taken place; but by that time, the cat was out of the bag: blogs relay news in a non-linear fashion, they beam out information to all directions, that is picked up from other info processing points on the web; some are rather influential in the way that such information is passed along. All of a sudden, a non-sale became a sale.

So bloggers, amateur or semi-pro, be careful out there: the grapevine game has consequences. Double-check your sources, or better still, differentiate from the rest of the media and provide content, criticism and analysis on your blogs, instead of plain xeroxing of random press releases.

Now, did you hear the one about the upcoming sale of a two-word, hyphenated IDN .mobi for over seven figures?