I’m quoting from David Gibbons from Zillow.com. He wrote these remarks in a comment, but I’m pulling them out because it’s an interesting topic: How can web-based vendors build databases of neighborhood expertise?
What you are seeing in the neighborhood space is the lack of any predefined neighborhood database. It’s never been done before and so, while there’s a great place to start when building a taxonomy of regions at any other level, neighborhoods are tough to build.
The 6,500 neighborhoods currently defined on Zillow were done by hand. We’ve talked this through with outside.in – they took the same approach. The solution is to allow homeowners to collaboratively describe their neighborhoods and we’ll iterate towards that but even homeowners seldom agree on neighborhood designations and boundaries. It’s an interesting problem to solve.
That’s what I said. This is me when Zillow 6 was released:
What does all this have to do with Zillow.com?
I think they’ve made a mistake in their approach to community building, a mistake that will prevent a true community from emerging from all their efforts.
As an example, what is a neighborhood? It’s not what Zillow says it is, and it’s not what some city council says it is. A neighborhood is what the neighbors say it is, and, as in my North Central Phoenix neighborhood, neighbors can differ about what the neighborhood really is.
So how should Zillow define the neighborhoods it hopes end-users will create content around?
It shouldn’t. It should let the users define the neighborhoods, and if there are different interpretations of what the neighborhood is, it should allow the proponents of those different ideas to create multiple competing neighborhood descriptions. When one starts to draw all the attention and the other fades away, Zillow can snuff the loser. Until then, the neighborhood advocates will have an investment in creating content for Zillow, and an avid interest in getting their friends to the site to show off what they have created.
In other words, they will have created a virtual analogue of their neighborhood as a means of defining and describing it. This is an atom-sized on-line community, an acorn from Read more
After spending a lot of time this week following up on various ads, trying to track down Realtors to ask quick questions about their listings and spending time on “competitors'” websites and blogs, I have determined that there is a formula to how to SUCK as a Realtor. Part of my appeal as a contributor is that I’m not a Realtor. I don’t practice Real Estate, but I’m involved just enough to witness why people have a poor perception of the industry. If you want to SUCK as a Realtor, be sure to follow these tips in acronym form:
I had posted 
In a move that is either inspired or incredibly stoopid, Zillow.com will this afternoon launch a brand new group weblog devoted to real estate technology issues. This of course is a large part of the content of 
Okay, here’s a Black Pearl made from sandy irritants we picked up at 
