Michael Wurzer There’s an interesting discussion brewing over at the Bloodhound. Below are some comments I posted over there in response to Greg Swann writing, “When little vendors see the sole of a big boot right overhead, we expect them to shriek. But their caviling will come to nothing. Zillow 5 is here.”
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Greg, I don’t know if your “little vendor†comment was aimed at FBS or not, but we do hold that badge as an honor so I’ll respond. I didn’t hear myself shriek upon reading Zillow’s news. In fact, I distinctly heard a yawn. This is a yawner to me, as an MLS software vendor, for all the reasons you have illuminated a few times. Zillow themselves have said they are a media company and an MLS system is more than that. In fact, I suggested that Zillow should just quit beating around the bush and ask for the listings or possibly buy or merge with Trulia. Or, if what you say is true, that “Anyone else could report these facts, picking them off of any one of dozens of Realtors’ IDX systemsâ€, then why doesn’t Zillow (who is “anyone elseâ€) simply report the listings for sale themselves? Why are they resorting to convoluted doublethink? Zillow clearly needs the listings to improve the traffic to their site, but, the advertising of list prices and possibly bedrooms and bathrooms doesn’t come close to touching the search power of an MLS system. I wasn’t shrieking before and I’m not now. I did get a good night’s sleep last night, though.
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Michael Wurzer April 5th, 2007 5:03 am
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For further clarification on my perspective, if I were an agent, I’d definitely consider posting on Zillow, just like I’d be working the many other web 2.0 sites. As you and Brian point out, they provide a good bang for the buck. But I think the next great thing is going to be a meta-poster system where agents can blog post to a single site and have their posts syndicated automatically to Active Rain, Point2, Zillow, InmanWiki, Coldwell Banker Blog, Localism, their own personal blog, and probably a dozen others I haven’t seen yet. There has to be big money there, don’t you think? I thought the MLS industry was challenging with so many tightly focused local systems, but this new model of dozens of national sites all covering the same territory takes that challenge to a whole new level. That’s the ticket for the MLS, I think, to create a local blogging platform that syndicates the blog posts to all the national media companies to drive traffic back to the listings. Listings. The discussion always seems to come back around to the pesky little buggers.
And for someone else yawning, check out Jonathon Dalton’s post.