The famous May 1993 call to arms resulted in the massively disastrous RIN project (Realtor Information Network). The project was an effort to create a proprietary on line system linking Realtors to a national MLS of available properties. RIN would have also created a Realtor controlled gateway through which consumers could directly access the inventory of homes.

Fourteen million dollars later, with the membership in an uproar and the f.u.d. factor of fear, uncertainty, and doubt running wild, NAR brought in (or he strolled in) would be Lion tamer Stuart Wolff and his tiny Web start up, RealSelect. It seems almost too funny, but NAR really didn't know what an uproar was until Wolff's RealSelect started looking successful. Now why is that? And the more successes RealSelect notches, the louder the outcry gets?

I have a theory as to why that seeming paradox persists. But before I can posture those thoughts, we really need to understand that the Lions did in fact come, and they came from all directions with a roaring hunger beyond even Bill Chee's vivid imagination.

In June of 1995 I had a chance to speak privately with Mr. Chee about the Lion's "identity" and the famous call to arms. His concern then was with the unique nature of digital communications. As ever more aspects of how we interact with the world, "information" if you will, become digitized, he believed possible Lions to be those companies positioned to control both the packaging of the information freight, the carrier services needed to transport the content, and the software protocols to unwrap and discern its value. Looking back, these thoughts go far beyond "vivid". They were prescient.

At that time, Microsoft and AT&T topped the Chee list of Lions to watch. The Internet was yet a distant whisper, but AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy were growing on line phenoms. Bulletin Board Systems were all the rage. And the RIN project was running neck in neck with Dow Jones Teleres project at the cutting edge of real estate efforts. Similarly, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were pouring resources into EDI based closed systems.

Today, only AOL and Microsoft can really be considered as credible Lions. Most everything else went the way of RIN, either unceremoniously canceled or becoming a wounded refugee searching for Internet relief.

Is the Lion you know better than the one you don't? In the case of AOL, the answer is yes. In the case of Microsoft though, we have a Lion that has not only laid claim to the entire savannah, but now threatens to eat all other territorial intruders. Meanwhile though, a whole new crop of predators have rushed the hapless Chihuahuas of real estate. Yahoo!, Intuit, Excite, InfoSeek, Lycos, HomeSeekers, HomeScout, GetSmart, eLoan, HomeShark, KeyStroke, and AmeriNet. Wheee, and that list doesn't even begin to describe the sweep of interlopers coming over the hill.

Who invited these guys? Well, for one thing the failure of RIN left the industry without a technology based barrier to entry. It was almost too easy to swoop in with another consumer gateway to the transaction process. NAR had put all their eggs in one basket, making it easy for the Lions to reach in and take what they needed. The result has become omelet du jour time for consumers.

Within the industry however, even bigger jaws drool. Previous efforts at national consolidation and acquisition had predictably succumbed to the local independence of traditional real estate. But new networking strategies and electronic communications promised investors that management could wring out the best of both local and global attributes without compromise. As the money on Wall Street flowed, HFS became Cendant, along with a few hundred thousand agents and more than one third of the nations listings. One Stop Shopping moved from the local brokerage blue print to a national role out model backed by a high powered integration of Internet, Relocation, Mortgage and Affinity Marketing might. This monster network model was even recently enjoined by deep pockets lender GMAC, as they acquired Better Homes & Garden, with the unfinished dish of Prudential still on the table, perhaps not for long.

The Lions are lunching but this is perhaps just an appetizer for the feast yet to come. Everyone seems to be staking out their territory, making alliances to fend off a certain charge from the big roar, Microsoft. And then there is a chilling anticipation of a certain cable TV assault, an assault that will put some highly interactive version of "The Used Home" shopping network in 60% of American consumer homes. In the eCommerce game, real estate has become one of the best bones left on the table. Chihuahuas indeed.

The NAR objective of keeping the Realtor at the center of the transaction looks shaky. But when you really need a Lion tamer, exactly who do you call?

NAR called RealSelect. And what they got is not RIN, but it is still a credible play. In fact, it might be THE play.

But it's not RIN.

In a few short years, RealSelect has positioned itself to turn the NAR 15% stake into a return on investment that, in the event of an IPO, might amount to upwards of 5 to 10 times what NAR lost on RIN. More importantly though, RealSelect has kept organized real estate in the game. The once denigrated and dismissed Chihuahuas have become through RealSelect the only Lion at the table with half a chance of stopping Microsoft. They lead the pack.

The proof of this recognition can be seen in the acquiescence of other players as they forge strategic alliances behind the Realtor.com banner. If we can say that dealmaker Stuart Wolff was on roll prior to the unveiling of Microsoft's HomeAdvisor, since then he has gone on a veritable tear, ripping at blur rate through a chain of alliances designed to outflank HomeAdvisor's reach. The would be Lions are lining up, knowing full well that only a combined roar could possibly fend off Microsoft..

Recent RealSelect agreements embrace growling predators Intuit, Cendant, HomeBuilder.com, Excite, and Fannie Mae. AOL, Lycos, InfoSeek, and near every MLS organization in the country are within the Wolff embrace. He even managed to breach the gap with newspapers, landing an early alliance with USA Today.

RealSelect has a presence in 149 of 150 possible markets. The Realtor.com site averages over 230 million hits per month and has been the text book example of how to take advantage of a world gone crazy with portal mania.

So what's not to like? Why the outrage at every Realtor.com success?

My theory is simple. RealSelect is not RIN, nor can they deliver on the fundamental promise of RIN that things would not change. RIN did promise that life would be easier for Realtor members in that their access to information would no longer be limited by artificial MLS boundaries. In a RIN world the term "Open Access" meant easy Realtor access to any and all MLS databases without onerous membership fees.

In a RealSelect world, a world of hungry Lions, the term "Open Access" refers to all the access advantages consumers have.

The original RIN plan simply didn't envision consumers being at the center of the transaction process. But one of the things every practitioner must ask themselves today is if there was ever any real possibility that the RIN plan would work? Many routinely blame the failure of RIN on poor management and incompetence. But what if the fundamental design was flawed? What if no amount of money could possibly keep consumers from having what they want most, direct access to available homes and inclusive determination of the transaction process?

It seems to me that most of the outrage voiced by NAR members is based on the belief that somehow things should not change. That somehow technology could actually be used to halt the advance of technologically wrought progress. That somehow the networking changes now racking every other industry should be allowed to affect them. The practitioners have been so busy convincing themselves of their importance that they somehow forgot to convince consumers, and the door was left open for others to define transaction values.

The outrage concerning the recent Cendant - RealSelect agreement brings all elements of the argument to the surface. Some unhappy and very vocal practitioners see their membership dues going to support the most threatening local marketplace competition they have ever seen. They see their RIN investment building web pages and network infrastructure tools for one of the most feared Lions imagined. They see a NAR sponsored project feeding like some hurricane on the heat of local MLS content, to storm the shores of traditional real estate with a Cendant flood of commission crushing referral rates and gateway breaking affinity marketing sweeps.

If anything, RIN was a project to keep the playing field level and accessible to all practitioners, big and small. Now it looks to some that the Cendant Lion has the playing field between its teeth and with a sudden shake could break its neck once and for all.

Of course, there is a different viewpoint one could take. I believe that RealSelect has perhaps headed off and tamed the most serious threat real estate has ever faced. Time will tell, but prior to the CUC disclosure problems, Cendant was headed down a much different path than the one offered up by RealSelect. Consider that Cendant companies now hold listing contracts for more than a third of the nations available inventory. Plans are in place for a national network including ISP services and MLS access control for more than 250,000 agents. Full color print magazines featuring Cendant properties are now in by weekly production. They own 53% of the Relocation market and Cendant Mortgage is the single most successful 1-800 loan operation in the country, processing over 1,000 loans per day at the Cherry Hill New Jersey center. Direct and affinity marketing projects are combining with the network strategy to create a cradle to grave consumer purchase management program the envy of even Microsoft.

What happens if Cendant decides that the local MLS cannot send Cendant listings to Microsoft, RealSelect or anyone else? What happens if Cendant completes their networking and print distribution automation plans and withdraws from local MLS's? What happens to the independent agent landscape if a Cendant Internet/Intranet based network (one that has replaced the need for MLS affiliation) features a very one sided "offer of shared compensation"? What if that one sided offer of shared compensation makes it prohibitively difficult for an agent to leave Cendant, even as the referral fees from direct, affinity, relo and 1-800 mortgage lead generation escalate? What if the infrastructure deal with News Holdings Corp., the newspaper classified stalking horse that owns Interealty, (the entity that provides the majority of MLS system services as well as the management contract for the Coldwell Banker Web site), what if that deal had held together and the combination managed to knock out a channel strategy effectively locking local classified revenues into a unified newspaper owned web stream?

Now, ask yourself what it would be worth to have these things "not" happen. Isn't that what RIN was really supposed to be about? Wasn't that project supposed to be about creating a cooperative infrastructure that enabled participants of all shapes and sizes to pursue "their idea" of a "faster, better, cheaper" consumer transaction process?

Unlike Microsoft, RealSelect does not get into the transaction. The Cendant "One Stop Shopping" plan pits them directly against HomeAdvisor, Better Homes & Garden, Intuit, and any other transaction bone chomping Lion. That these many Lions would use RealSelect to carry their designs forward worries local practitioners who see their competitive advantage diminishing. But these competitive assaults were coming with or without RealSelect. And it's the "without" scenario that really ought cause one to worry.

Let the Lion Tamer do what he does best. And if you've got a better plan than Cendant, Microsoft, HomeShark or Intuit, now's the time to roll it out. During the pause before the roar, while the door's still open to better ways of servicing the pants off transacting consumers, now's the time to make your move.