Move.com is on the move with a shaking out of senior management and some all-star additions to staff.

Lorna Borenstein, an attorney formerly with Yahoo!, has been named President of Move, Inc. and will report to chief executive officer Mike Long. She will have full P&L responsibility and lead day-to-day business operations, engineering, marketing and product development of the company. Borenstein served as Yahoo! vice president, product for Yahoo!'s strategy on youth and education, global vice president and general manager of Yahoo! Personals and vice president, marketing of Yahoo! Search & Marketplace Group.

Allan Dalton, former president of Realtor.com, a division of Move.com, has stepped down to work on a top-secret enterprise for Move.com. Joining him will be David Lereah, former chief economist for the National Association of Realtors. The new enterprise is anticipated to serve consumers and real estate professionals. It is not known whether it will be a separate unit or folded into Realtor.com or another unit.

Stepping up to be president of Realtor.com is Errol Samuelson, former president of Top Producer, a productivity software division owned by Move.com. Samuelson is the first "tech guy" to be in the position.

"We hope to build upon the success of Realtor.com," says Samuelson, "provide new services, and continue a positive relationship with NAR and its members."

"I have a focus on technology and we intend to innovate more rapidly," continues Samuelson. "In the last five to six weeks we are making a difference with the new agent IDX website product. It's a beautiful product that provides rich deep community information, school information, demographics, income, weather, -- it's very rich. We have all the IDX listings where they are available with daily or weekly updates and mapping. Realtor.com was among the first to offer websites to agents, but if you look at this latest generation product, it's fantastic."

Adds Samuelson, "Another example is a gadget for Windows Vista. For anyone using the new Vista, you download the program, it sits on your desktop, and you type in 90210 and two beds, two baths. As you work, a small window shows you continuous slideshow of properties in the range of what you said you were looking for. It's a great consumer widget."

Realtor.com is reviving and enhancing push technology. The new website technology was built on top of technology that Samuelson and his team had been developing at Top Producer and configured it to build it on customers' websites. "I was heavily involved," says Samuelson. "My plan is to take a look at how we can take current and emerging technologies and provide better utility."

Rather than focus on the politics of Move.com and Realtor.com, the company appears to be changing direction to compete on the strengths of its technologies and market advantage.

According to independent third-party, Media Metrix, Realtor.com had over 6 million Unique Users in March (6,007,000). (Editor's note: an individual is counted as a “Unique User” only once in a given month, even if he or she visits the site multiple times).

Realtor was the No. 1 site in the real estate category with a commanding lead over the No. 2 spot (MSN with 4.15 million Unique Users). Incidentally, MSN also features Realtor.com content.

Traffic on real estate sites tends to be seasonal. With the spring market in full swing, traffic on Realtor.com grew from February to March by 20 percent. What makes this impressive is that this outpaces the real estate category in general, which saw traffic growth of only 13 percent between February and March.

Another important metric is "time on site" because it shows engagement. The average minutes of use for users on Realtor.com was 13.4 in March (No. 2 in the category, MSN, had an average minutes per visitor of 1.7 minutes.) Consumers spent 228 million (!) minutes on Realtor.com during the month of March.

This is 380 percent higher than the next closest website.

Published: May 3, 2007

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Blanche is a renowned author of five real estate books. Her newest, Bubbles, Booms and Busts: Make Money In Any Real Estate Market, McGraw-Hill, was rave-reviewed by The New York Times. She was also selected from hundreds of real estate experts to contribute to Donald Trump's book, Trump: The Best Real Estate Advice I Ever Received: 100 Top Experts Share Their Strategies, Rutledge Hill Press, and is featured on page 68. Order Now Review - Honors In 2006, Blanche was selected among scores of candidates to author two consumer real estate guidebooks for the National Association of Realtors: The NAR Guide to Home Buying, and The NAR Guide to Home Selling, Wiley & Sons. She is currently planning two new books for the NAR and its members.       Known for her keen insight into real estate industry issues and for her ability to make complex subjects easy to understand, Blanche is a sought-after keynote and continuing education speaker. Real estate organizations from MLSs, to brokerages, to franchisors, to associations hire her to provide up-to-the-minute analysis of real estate industry news and advice on how to improve revenues. Her passionate delivery, peppered with stinging wit, is a huge hit with audiences and fans. Don Klein, CEO Greater Nashville Association of Realtors, Blanche Evans, Richard Courtney, president 2007, GRAR "The GNAR membership meeting last week featured Blanche Evans as the keynote speaker. Her comments and insights resonated extremely well with those in attendance and we have had many requests for copies of her PowerPoint Presentation. She was a terrific part of the membership meeting and convention program!" - Don Klein, CEO Greater Nashville Association of Realtors Coverage from WSMV, Nashville - 8-14-2007 That Interview Guy - Get Inside The Head Of Today's Generation 2007 AE Institute Session - To purchase 2006 AE Institute Session - Parts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 HouseValues Mastermind call - Parts 1 2 Blanche's fireside chat with Jeremy Conaway, HAR - Click here. For more articles by Blanche, click here.