A couple weeks ago on one of my afternoon walks I happened upon this For Sale sign:

The sign was on an older house, run-down, with bad gutters and a mossy roof. (It could probably use some new aluminum siding too.)

Oh! And then I remembered this:

Kendra Todd has left Florida and was moving to Seattle and joining Keller Williams.

Then yesterday I received this notice of a REO/Shortsale Panel talk featuring, who else but Kendra Todd:

I don’t know Kendra, but she sounds like a busy gal. Her website for Keller Williams, the Kendra Todd Group, is under construction, but her other personal websites are up and appear up to date. She doesn’t seem to have any active listings right now, but perhaps she’s just hanging her license at Keller Williams and not actively working there. I gave her a call and haven’t heard back yet, but wanted to get this posted in case anyone wanted to attend her panel discussion tomorrow.

She’s currently the host of “My House is Worth What?” on HGTV, a show that I was on a few years ago when I was asked to talk about an unusual in-city home built by artist James Nowak.

She has two other websites, KendraTodd.net and KendraTodd.com. The .com website lists dozens of personal appearances, so I doubt she really sells real estate herself. According to a Keller Williams press release, she joined the Keller Williams Realty Greater Seattle market center as the head of their Luxury Homes Division, so perhaps she just lends her name to the group.

Kendra, call us! Let us know what you’re up to in Seattle!

(Ok, Kendra called. She said she was living in Florida and is filming “My House Is Worth What?” on the West Coast and was tired of spending all of her time on an airplane. She didn’t want to live in California, so came to Seattle and fell in love with the place, so she moved her a few months ago.

Is there an online class divide? The research, and our own use, suggests that there is.

In “Does your social class determine your online social network?”, author Breeanna Hare found that people in more affluent demographics are 25 percent more likely to be found friending on Facebook, while the less affluent are 37 percent more likely to connect on MySpace.

Even more affluent are users of Twitter and LinkedIn, as almost 38 percent of LinkedIn users earn more than $100,000 a year.

They also found a strong overlap between those who use Facebook and those who use LinkedIn.

But we already knew that, didn’t we?

Stats
Users with household income above $75,000
Facebook — 41.74 percent
MySpace — 32.38 percent
LinkedIn — 58.35 percent
Twitter — 43.34 percent

Users with household income under $50,000
Facebook — 28.42 percent
MySpace — 37.13 percent
LinkedIn — 17.34 percent
Twitter — 28.36 percent

Rumor has it that Playboy was quietly being shopped around for $300 million and Apollo Capital Partners who owns Realogy, Century 21, Coldwell Banker and Better Homes & Gardens, has been approached to purchase the floundering dirty magazine business.

Former CEO Christie Hefner would have received $1.7 million, on top of her $2-million severance payment, if the adult entertainment company had been acquired by another company before March 31, according to a company filing last week.

The battered company’s market capitalization is now around $100 million and nobody has been willing to pay the substantial premium that it would take to persuade Hef to sell.

Sources said the sellers are looking for far more than the company’s market capitalization because that would ensure Hef has enough on hand to maintain his lavish lifestyle.

The Playboy bunny ears are one of the most famous trademarks in the world, but the empire has fallen on hard times as the Internet and video-on-demand have eroded its core brand, the magazine.

Hefner, now 83 years old, said recently that one of his biggest regrets was taking Playboy public.

Other Playboy/Real Estate news:

Coldwell Banker Charitable Foundation holds fundraiser at the Playboy Corporate Headquarters in Chicago.

Hef’s new girlfriend, Crystal Harris (no relation!) is a real estate agent!

Birds-eye view of Playboy Mansion on Zillow.

Who Bought Hugh Hefner and Playboy Wife Kim’s House for $18 Million?

When staging a home for sale, no Playboy Bunnies!

It’s always been a good idea and the right thing to do, but now the Federal Trade Commission will require bloggers to clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.

It is the first time since 1980 that the commission has revised its guidelines on endorsements and testimonials, and the first time the rules have covered bloggers, but the commission stopped short of specifying how bloggers must disclose any conflicts of interest.

The FTC said its commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the final guidelines, which had been expected. Penalties include up to $11,000 in fines per violation.

I have often questioned some blogs shady practices of citation, quotes, reviews and fawning, and welcome this new rule, though I can’t figure out how it will be enforced.

Though not specified, I’m assuming there will be a dollar threshold, but perhaps not. Greg Swann has written about his displeasure with real estate bloggers accepting gifts and hasn’t hesitated to share his disapproval.

Though I don’t think it’s a huge problem in the real estate blogs, other game and tech blogs and so-called “Mommy Blogs” may have to change their tactics.

It could be that technology will trump all of these new NWMLS rules, and blogging/comments/AVM restrictions will become ineffective and impossible to enforce with the new Google Toolbar application called Sidewiki.

Sidewiki is part of the Google Toolbar and is built directly into Firefox and IE and will be in Google’s Chrome browser in the future. Users activate the service by clicking on a button and a sidebar appears to the left of whatever website is being viewed. The user can then leave a comment on the entire page or a selected piece of text, and share the URL via email, Twitter or Facebook.

This will mean that anyone who installs the Sidewiki will be able to add comments to your real estate webpage, including individual property pages that you may have created to help market your properties.

There is no “opt-out” tab, no way to eliminate the sidebar comments, no way to edit out objectionable material, porn, spam links, comments on the personal character of the sellers or the agent or the home or the neighborhood.

While the owner of the page will be able to have the first comment viewed, other users can read and vote comments up or down. All those votes will create a user ranking for each individual that will determine where their comments fall on the Sidewiki. The higher the ranking, the higher comments appear. So if allowed by the tool, website owners will have to spend time voting down the bad, spammy, untrue or inflammatory comments, just to get them to the bottom of the page.

Obviously, comments will be impossible to enforce and hapless agents and entire brokerages could find themselves in violation of their MLS rules regarding commenting on individual listings as mischievous websurfers write virtual graffiti on the wall next to their webpage.