About Site
What is theClozing
TheClozing is a new real estate and business news aggregator. We gather and organize real estate and business news from major U.S. newspapers, magazines and publications with related articles from Social Media. All links are to the original sources. News is updated hourly to provide continuously fresh content.
The Big Idea
It all began when we read a news study by the Associated Press, A New Model for News. We thought we should take a shot at creating it.
According to the AP findings, folks get news headlines from many different sources throughout the day. But there is something they don’t get easily, something which is harder to find - the backstory. The backstory is the interpretation of the news-- what does this news mean to me?
Journalists, trained to be objective, focus on the facts and leave out, for the most part, the subjective interpretation of those facts - that was left to the editorial department and the letters to the editor. But that left many unsatisfied. The slack was picked up by bloggers who’d grab the news and interpret it for their readers. And rather than sending a letter to the editor, readers could more easily comment to the blogger. This allowed for news stories to be filled in, made richer. Soon social media became the new news kid on the block, providing the missing backstory and expanding the social commentary.
What was needed was a marriage of mainstream media headline news with social media backstorytellers. We performed the ceremony. We’ll see how the marriage works out.
How New is Clozed
We gather real estate and business news feeds from the top newspapers and magazines in the country and combine them with feeds from the major real estate blogs. All links are to the original news sources and blogs. The blend of newspapers and blogs will change, depending on the results. We expect we’ll have to do some filtering and tweaking along the way (heck, you can’t trust computers to be perfect), so bear with us.
About Us
Joe met Anthony in 2007 and the two planned to one day collaborate on a project. That day has come.
Joseph Ferrara, Esq., New York, After 25 years as a real estate and intellectual property attorney in New York City, Joe had an idea for a one stop, all inclusive, subscription based real estate classified site, Sellsius Real Estate. Despite innovations like tag based exact match property search, customized URL links and a code of ethics, the company crashed and burned after his partner left to get a paying job.
Joe is currently a social media and online marketing consultant and the publisher of the Sellsius Real Estate Marketing Blog, an eclectic mix of new technology and tools, marketing, futurism, humor and crude Selltoons. A long standing member of the RE.net, Joe can be seen touring the country as a talking head for real estate and social media conferences. He is also the Blog Professor for HomeGain.com.
Joe was born and raised in New York. The smartest kid in his Catholic high school, he nonetheless wanted to be an artist, whereupon his Depression-era father explained the term “starving artist” (and said maybe he must not be the smartest kid after all). Taking dear old dad’s advice, he got a business and finance degree from Pace University and then headed to Houston, Texas during the late 1970’s oil boom to study law. He would have attended Yale or Harvard but liked Texas barbeque and the mild winters.
Returning to New York City, he teamed with former national debating champ (now best selling non-fiction author) Gerald Posner, to form an entertainment law practice, where they represented mostly European rockstars and wannabees. They got into real estate law when Gerald’s building went co-op.
During the real estate boom of the early 2000s, Joe opened a boutique real estate brokerage in New York. In January 2006, the Sellsius blog was born.
The Sellsius brand became increasingly popular, especially after a Blog Tour in the summer of 2007, where Joe and his partner traveled 10,000 miles, visiting 33 cities in a 5 week cross country RV adventure to study real estate consumer behavior and spread the good work of blogging and social media.
Anthony Barba, Berlin, A serial entrepreneur, Anthony worked with Time Warner Inc. to create their first online portal for mountain Real Estate and Vacation Rentals for its Ski and Skiing Magazine. He is currently the American Geschäftsführer at Deutsche startup iliketotallyloveit.com, a social shopping network and aggregator of amazingly cool products.
Mr. Barba, also co-founded Rezorter.com after he almost got into an acident on the taconic state parkway looking for new england resort conditions on his cell phone.
He ventured into real estate after his father, a real estate developer, passed away suddenly from brain cancer. Overnight he was foreclosing on delinquent leasers, negotiating sales terms and marketing properties.
Anthony was born and grew up on Long Island , New York and dreamed of one day doing exactly what he's doing right now. He now lives in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin with his wife Beatrix. He once was able to run the 400m Hurdles in under 60 seconds.
Contact Us
Have a question, comment, suggestion (or if you just want to say hi), contact us at HELLO at THECLOZING dot com
OR use our feedback tab on the home page.
Sponsor The Clozing
We don’t accept ads on theClozing. We think it distracts from content. Instead, we publish sponsored feeds from approved real estate content providers in the right sidebar (look to the right on the home page). Contact us at HELLO at THECLOZING dot com if you are interested in having your feeds appear in this section.
Special Thank You
A special “Thank You” to Sherry Chris, visionary CEO of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, and Wendy Forsythe, for having faith in our vision and taking a risk in sponsoring our effort. We also tip our hats to Marc Davison of 1000Watt Consulting for his encouragement and support.
