Chickens? Eggs? How about poached eggs on toast…?
BloodhoundBlog’s team coverage of the Zillow.com upgrades:
- Greg Swann: 2006 is the Year of Zillow: The 900 pound AVM has been upgraded to be a free listing platform and the presumptive national MLS system…
- Greg Swann: Early morning Zillow news round-up…
- Greg Swann: Zillow redux: A post-diluvian retrospective…
- Kris Berg: Louis Vuitton and the French Revolution
- Greg Swann: You were saying…?
- Cathleen Collins: In the trenches with Zillow.com: A working Realtor’s first-hand experience listing a home…
- Greg Swann: Zillow.com versus Realtor.com: Nothing grows in the shade of great tree…
- Russell Shaw: Thank You, Mr. Barton, May I Have Another?
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate marketing
dustin says:
Greg,
I’m not convinced the situation is so black and white. Even after their recent announcement, Realtor.com reaches a different audience than Zillow… Unless Zillow has something else up their sleeve, my guess is that you’ll see the Zillow spike in traffic die down as the seasonal increase in traffic on Realtor.com picks up in January.
December 8, 2006 — 1:40 pm
Kris Berg says:
If Dustin is right, then I’m glad I renewed. 🙂
December 8, 2006 — 3:43 pm
Greg Swann says:
> my guess is that you’ll see the Zillow spike in traffic die down
Wasn’t there when I posted. Alexa was still cutting of at 12/06/06, which I thought was an interesting place to set a trail marker.
My take, Dustin, is that Realtor.com is on the ropes. Realtor.com has every MLS-listed home. Zillow.com has almost every listable home. They have an infinitely improveable franchise, and everyone else has popsicles melting in the sun. It’s a huge difference — and if we could all agree to call it the Swann Paradigm Shift, I would be very grateful.
The mammals have arrived. The dinosaurs may still be with us for a while — but not for a long while. Zillow’s way of doing a national consumer-oriented home search makes too much sense for any other model to survive for long.
December 8, 2006 — 3:52 pm
Marc Brinitzer says:
Gotta agree with Greg here. Information is power, and the consumer is now in the driver’s seat with the pedal down. We won’t wrest control back without crashing the bus. And Zillow’s move is just the beginning.
December 8, 2006 — 4:08 pm
dustin says:
I don’t disagree a bit that Zillow is a force in the industry, but I’m still not convinced that makes all other online players dinosaurs. Please correct me if I’m wrong with these numbers, but the percent of advertising spend in real estate is still over 90% offline. So Zillow is much more likely to be pulling money from offline sources (newspapers, weekly magazines, bus benches, etc.) than online sources. In other words, Zillow is much more likely to make dinosaurs out of bus stop and grocery cart ads. I can’t blame you a bit for putting your laser-like focus on the technology, but in reality, things are more complicated than just having good technology. Not only does the actual listing count still matter, but as Spencer Rascoff says, “It’s a lot harder to hire a direct sales team than we’ve thought.” 🙂
December 8, 2006 — 7:16 pm
Kevin Boer says:
I think realtor.com will be around for a long time, but it will soon be relegated to the second tier of real estate web sites.
Not because it’s not as slick as zillow. Not because it only has current listings, rather than all homes.
The real reason is mostly its continued connection with and allegiance to NAR, a body which by definition can’t make decisions quickly, and which by historical example simply doesn’t understand the Internet. Any Zillow-killing idea that Realtor.com has up its sleeve is old news by the time the crustacean bureaucracy at NAR approves it. Put solds up? Oops — done! Enable uploads of as many pictures as wanted? Been there, done that.
The only competitive advantage Realtor.com has — and it’s a big one, one which will enable it to remain at least viable, though probably not profitable — is its impressive national inventory of homes. Zillow may never get there.
Cut the umbilical cord, become a true Internet player, get Alan Dalton to stop making a fool of himself in public, and Realtor.com could kick some serious a$$.
December 8, 2006 — 11:27 pm