Zillow Flounders A Bit With New Release
Greg’s right. Zillow.com’s latest release me-too’s Trulia.com. After their missteps last week (see Teething Problems as Zillow Bears its Fangs), the new release is not much of a surprise and definitely looks a little like Johnny-Come-Late-To-The-Party.
And while it’s probably a fair to say that the upgrades included in this release (Neighborhood conversations, Forum discussions and Polls) weren’t exactly driven by a desire to ape Trulia - there’s no doubt, Zillow’s new release charts a new course for the company square at their Bay Area competitors.
Unfortunately, it feels a little like they are stretching to find new applications for their destination. Long term, it’ll probably going to end up a battle of the business models (broker-centric Trulia vs. agent-centric Zillow) and who has the deeper VC pockets. But having spent a little time with the new release over night, I can offer up this however. Zillow is getting confusing.
Finding my neighborhood was difficult. Then I realized it didn’t exist (the closest I could find in Zillow’s database was Hillsdale). And when I finally navigated to the right neighborhood page, I didn’t know where to go first. There were way too many options…
Demographics? Yawn. Photos? Uh, none. (They’d have been wise to license
a feed from Flickr or somewhere to prepopulate this section.)
How about meeting the neighbors? With names like NUTS4THEVEHICROSS and junkmail_pdx, I’m not sure they’re the type of people I’d want to go grab a beer with at the Lucky Lab. Pass.
Maybe I’ll look for real estate for sale. Hmmm. No way to filter my searches and the majority of listings didn’t have any photos associated with them. No thanks. Plus, I’m sure this place is way overpriced.
Zillow is obviously still struggling with issues with the quality of its database. With +70 million homes, it’s not that surprising. But all it takes is one bad experience to turn away a user for good and hopefully their push for broker feeds will fix that situation. In the meantime, pass.
Finally, chasing the conversation is a lofty goal. Not much happening in my ‘hood. It is day one of course, but StreetAdvisor is still a ghost-town months on since its launch. Yourstreet has already packed up shop (see Yourstreet is Now Empty) and Backfence.com is first in the deadpool.
I’ve seen no compelling evidence that people, other than real estate agents, really want to participate in real estate discussions online. I’m not sure if its because of a sour market right now or if, as Brian at 1000watt puts it, it’s the The Creepy Factor.
As for the other features, well they just kind of feel tacked on. Forums? Scooped by Redfin. Plus there are many places professionals can already participate, like the excellent Real Estate Webmasters forums.
The real problem is, I’m not sure what Zillow is trying to do anymore. Their reach gets broader by the day but at the same time, more and more undefined. In their race to build stickiness and pageviews (i.e. advertising revenue) it seems like they are losing their focus a bit. And unfortunately, when you’re trying to be everything to anyone, you end up being nothing to everyone.
Technorati Tags: Zillow, zillow.com, web 2.0, real estate, real estate 2.0
7 Comment(s)
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John | Jul 11, 2007 | Reply
I agree Joel. While I have been impressed by most of their past releases, this one is tremendously underwhelming. Nothing really all that new or different here.
David G from Zillow.com | Jul 11, 2007 | Reply
Hi Joel. Good review — we’re our own harshest critics so nothing surprises me here.
Z6 was the first step for inviting community participation on neighborhood pages and improving ‘discoverability’ is a high priority – I’m glad to see that called out in your review. The compelling content in your neighborhood will be your neighbors and the posts they leave. Please plan on coming back in a month or two to review this feature when there are more contributions. All online communities deal with this paradox of launching “empty” features — and your point about seeding with flickr photo’s is well taken.
FYI – searches are filtered on the search results page (look left). The workflow on Zillow is … search by geography, then filter.
In terms of our role, and from the Real Estate professional’s perspective, simply think of Zillow as the best place online to meet future clients. Likewise, the major attraction for buyers and sellers on Zillow has started to expand from the information Zillow publishes to the members on the site and the information they publish — but our value proposition for consumers remains simple — Zillow is your Edge in Real Estate. Please note, though, that our definition of “real estate” goes far beyond a focus on listings — and so, some of what we do will be confusing to industry insiders who only focus on homes for sale.
Alex Mather | Jul 11, 2007 | Reply
Joel: couldnt agree more.
the more and more these companies add to their offering the more and more they resemble large, crappy sites that litter the web.
i fear that the combination of pressure from very large VC rounds at very high valuations and advertising business models = a focus on hits hits hits, not real value. i hope im wrong.
real value creates the stickiness you’re talking about. real value comes when you solve real problems. real problems arent solved easily. when a company is focused on hits, i can see them looking for cheap ways to gain traffic – not solving real problems.
Hawaii Life | Jul 11, 2007 | Reply
Zillow should concentrate on their original tools because they’re great. However, I agree with Joel, they’re getting harder to use. Instead of new features, how about making the old ones more useable?
Trang - The Legacy Group | Jul 11, 2007 | Reply
Too bad once you release a feature on your website you can never change it.
Give them a break, they release the communities and the next day they get bashed. I like Zillow and in my opinion they have released many new features that are good for agents. I’m pretty sure they will add these *yawn* new features you talk about.
Adriana Gascoigne | Jul 11, 2007 | Reply
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Jack Macferson | Jul 12, 2007 | Reply
Yup I completely with the wind here. You are absolutely right.
I think David is right, we are our own harshest Critics.
Zillow is getting Cozy………..
Gd Luck in future
Jack