Clicks and Bricks -- Marketing and
Technology Are Inseparable

Do You Understand Clicks and Bricks?... Don't worry. It's impossible to understand everything that's happening. But you gotta try. Just listen to Pottruck and Pearce in their book, Clicks and Bricks. "To achieve synergy between business and technology, the leader must ... get online, literally and figuratively. She has to study and become reasonably fluent in the language and rules of the technologist." ... And that's been the mission of PikeNet since launching the PikeNet Directory of Commercial Real Estate in 1996 -- helping you navigate real estate Internet land.

Wow, it sure seemed easy in the early days. There were very few pure-play web services, really just the listing services. The majority of web sites were simple extensions (primarily brochureware) of traditional real estate business models. But in the past couple of years, there has been an explosion of information dot-coms and the creation of totally new business models combining heavy doses of information and service. It's become much more difficult to organize PikeNet.

So Eileen Circo and I spent almost twelve hours last week rethinking and reorganizing the "Channels" on the PikeNet home page -- major brainstorming. Channels are the general links that initially help you focus your search. The biggest change we made was the elimination of the E-business Channel; all businesses are becoming e-businesses. So we moved most of these sites into the renamed Asset/Property Management Channel and the new Tenant Services Channel. And to make the individual Channels more accessible, I separated them later into two broad areas -- Transactions/Management and Support/Services. It's still a work in progress. ... So how can PikeNet help you understand what's going on in the industry? ... Let us know your thoughts at ecirco@pikenet.com or ppike@pikenet.com.

PikeNet Expo... "Real Estate's eMarketplace ... Connect, Communicate, Collaborate." ... Yep, it's getting closer. We're planning to launch the registration page and complete Expo web site on Thursday, July 6. So check back then. PikeNet Expo at the New York Hilton, Oct 23-24, 2000.

--Peter