Zillow Enters the Game For Real Now
by Blink.Color
I’m a little late to the party on this one.
Zillow released an update to its database yesterday, increasing its coverage of US to over 80 million properties, as well as significantly revamping its Zestimates algorithms with new statistical models to hopefully increase the accuracy of the valuations.
Most of that won’t be immediately obvious to the end user. What’s probably more significant to some observers is that Zillow has dropped finally the Beta tag from its logo.
Part of the motivation behind this decision, perhaps, is in reaction to a whole new crop of real estate search sites that are going to be hitting the market (notably Frontdoor, with many more on the way). Zillow is now the old kid the block.
Dropping the Beta moniker is a nice positioning move for the company, which is now almost two years old, to firmly establish its street cred in the eyes of consumers.
Certainly, this transition probably also means that the company has to turn the corner in the eyes of investors and observers. FoREM readers certainly have opinions on what the future holds for the heavily-funded giant.
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Zillow has now officially entered the game and now its time to prove the model.
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8 Comment(s)
2 Trackback(s)
- From Zillow.com cultivates its garden with ten million new database records, improved home valuation algorithms and the adoption, with Trulia.com and other Realty.bots, of a RETS-compatible listings standard | BloodhoundBlog: Real estate marketing and technolo | Jan 10, 2008
- From 45 Things I Learned at RE Connect « 4realz.net | Jan 13, 2008
Gainesville FL Real Estate | Jan 10, 2008 | Reply
Zillow needs to come up with some original ideas and not copy everyone else at this point. On the other hand, that strategy has worked for Yahoo! for years…
retrove.com | Jan 10, 2008 | Reply
I don’t consumers really understand the “beta” moniker anyway. If I remember correctly O’Reilly on a web 2.0 design patterns paper stated sites should be in “perpetual beta”… why not wear that patch proudly?
ZillowFan | Jan 10, 2008 | Reply
Perfect timing - Zillow was just surpassed by Trulia in Comscore’s rankings for December. I wonder if removing the Beta tag will help them reverse their downward traffic trend. It’s going to be really hard to make enough money to satisfy their VC’s as a “media company” if their traffic continues to decline…
Gerry Bourgeois, CRB, CRS | Jan 10, 2008 | Reply
I think it will be very difficult for a computer program to effectively differentiate the intricacies of neighborhoods - especially in many of the communities in New England. Also, around here for example, a ‘colonial’ style home can be quite different from another, even if on the same street.
jason | Jan 10, 2008 | Reply
Congrats on quote and link in the NY Times.
Sol Sek | Jan 10, 2008 | Reply
Sites like zillow and trulia will not be able to engage everyday consumers because there’s little stickiness. People are not as interested in house values as much as we think. At least not as often as we think.
After the core group of real estate enthusiasts ( investors, agents and journalists, website developers, etc..) pass the WOW phase, audience will decline.
For example, I was once WOWed by Zillow and Trulia. I see them now as quarters in the same jar.
retrove.com | Jan 11, 2008 | Reply
@Sol - I do agree that the intial Wow phase maybe over but as Z builds up it’s listing inventory I think it will be able to sustain small growth but I don’t know if they can do it before the funds run out. I also think that when they add the mortgage products they will be tapping into markets which will help also. Since they are building a site of “homes” and not necessarily “listings” they have alot more opportunities to engage consumers at different life cycle points.
Sol Sek | Jan 15, 2008 | Reply
Retrove, I see Z as a rerun of housvalues only with greater transparency. Both started by offering house values and later mortgage product.
I don’t think it matters whether Z is offering listings or homes, everybody knows ( hopefully ) from the 2000 dot com bust to be a bit more cautious with free products and services in hopes of turning CPM to $$$$$$.
In fact, the search engine business almost went bankrupty until goto.com discovered pay per click which later sold to Yahoo and cloned by Google.