Yeah, I am kind of dragging my way through Onward and couldn't put the first one down, too. I am sure that they are getting good reactions to their app-driven social media efforts which I obviously can't measure, but I was really surprised I didn't see more comments and mentions given how big the "community" is and how the brand lends itself to social media, at least IMO.

@Eric The most interesting thing I have learned in my 9 years in the business is every company makes its money differently. There are certainly plenty of residents and prospects who think it's really cool / a major plus that your staff wore flip flops. You don't need to appeal to everyone - just enough to fill your units and what you are doing is working for you and personally, I think it's a really fun niche. BTW, isn't Mark Zuckerberg famous for wearing flip flops 24/7? Hasn't seemed to hurt his valuation.

As far as the Facebook=online billboard comparison, while this is true in many cases and not ideal in my mind, I think the level of interaction and engagement will evolve and improve over time as people learn what works. I think it's worth mentioning that people come up to me at conferences and tell me how great they thought a particular article was that had absolutely online engagement. Billboards are not as good as interactive sites, but it doesn't mean they are worthless.

@Doug Thanks for sharing your point of view. It's a great counterpoint. We see lots of maintenance and leasing renewal requests on Facebook pages. I'm over 40 and there is no way I would communicate this way, but it's a fact of life for some communities now. Social sites just give people another way to communicate with you, just like email did in the mid 90s (when my office dragged me kicking and screaming into installing an email server!). Most FB sites have limited to no engagement but we have several examples that have daily interactions. It depends on the community and as I said before, one size does not fit all.