A new start-up for residential homes

Earlier this week a new service called Zillow opened up for a Beta (is there anything else these days?). It is all about automated valuation on homes in the US.

'How much is your house worth? Zillow knows'  A CNET article on the 7th february
'How scared should brokers be?' BusinessWeek on the January 13
'Zillow aims for realty riches' RedHerring, october 26, 2005
'Vad kostar Bill Gates hus?' Realtid.se, february 15th, 2006  (In Swedish)

Update on 2006-04-08 18:04 by Magnus (The Believer)

Blog entries regarding Zillow:
Zillow's CFO Spencer Rascoff's Blog about "what's going on in my work life at Zillow.com"
Their company blog is found here ZillowBlog.

However, some think it is 'duller than expected' (from yardley.ca)
Which highlight Homethinking service (also Beta!)

A great link is to Inman which have had a 'What is Zillow?' contest going prio to the launch. (Yes, Zillow has been quite secretive.. "to develop a new kind of online real estate service..." ). You have to read the posting on this one!

Not only is it interesting that a company is able to raise some $32 million but also the fact that their business model seems (?) to be based only on revenues from advertisment. In other words, maybe the thoughts back in 2000 wasn't that out of the scope... It sure works for Google to release services that attracts enough users in order for business to put in some major dollars for ads.

Update on 2006-04-08 18:05 by Magnus (The Believer)

The service
Using Zillow you are able to define a street (in the US) and zoom in to street level and get a overlay of the size of the property and the "the Zestimates", which is based on, among others, tax asssesment record.  However, according to blogs the value is less than most people expect...

Update on 2006-04-08 18:05 by Magnus (The Believer)

The debate goes on..
How does Zillow works, click here.
Including how to stop it evaluating your house.

Finally, a note on Zillow from Nicholas Carr himself that actually matters.

The long tail

The table below shows that 40% of Amazon’s unitsales fall in titles with ranks above 100,000. That is that 40% of all the books sold are not among the 100 000 most sold titles! (You may have heard the number 57% and that is if you update the graph with 2004 sales figures.)

This phenomenon is called 'the long tail'.

     

"The term refers specifically to the yellow part of the sales chart above, which shows a standard demand curve that could apply to any industry, from entertainment to hard goods. The red part of the curve is the hits, which have dominated our markets and culture for most of the last century. The yellow part is the non-hits, or niches, which is where the new growth is coming from now and in the future." Definition from at thelongtail.

Read more at 'The Long Tail 101' at thelongtail.
The graph above is from a MIT paper on the long tail issue.
To read the original Wired article is found here.  

The question is; how do you reach your tail?

"Microsoft Dead"

On thing is clear, if Microsoft goes into a new area you know there is business in the area (or a threat to another). The last couple of weeks there has been much writing about their 'Live' solution. So no bigger surprise that one man in San Francisco couldn't hesitate to make a comment... and what a statement. 
"The speech was an amazing bracket to his famous Tidal Wave speech on December 7, 1995 about how Microsoft would own the Internet. But over this 10 year span, what has Microsoft done for business on the Web besides cloning a slow browser? The answer: nothing. "
...
"Last month, our number one competitor surrendered, and decided to take its place beside several former competitors at software's Shady Pines Rest Home, also known as Oracle. It was a merciful outcome for shareholders, but a time of con"fusion" for customers."
...
"This transformation goes by many names: On-Demand, Web 2.0, Software as a Service. But they all point to the same conclusion: The era of the traditional software "load, update, and upgrade" business and technology model is over. It is time for "The Business Web."
...
"A new range of start-ups are showing how this is just the beginning of the business Web--that there are new technologies coming to replace traditional word processing, spreadsheets, and other staples of business with Internet services. Companies like Writely, Numsum, Zimbra, and Goffice are breaking Microsoft's hypnotic trance that the Microsoft Office, and its myriad of clients and servers we are installing today, it is simply a dinosaur. "

Thanks Mark (Mark Benioff, CEO and founder of Salesforce) for putting words to the thoughts of every believer. Read the entire "internal memo" here.

Google teaming up with CoStar

Now days you can't really be too surprised when Google is expanding it's services. The funny thing about this one is that I was discussing it with Andrew Waller at Remit Consulting just a few days before. Maybe I should go back to consulting...  ;-)

Talking about Andrew.
You have to check out his new book "IT for property people". Click here.

One more thing, from the article above regarding CoStar.
"CoStar's proprietary data doesn't come cheaply to its clients and presumably would be a premium feature on Google. One San Jose brokerage house pays $9,000 a month; larger corporations can pay up to $20,000 for information on commercial buildings that includes high-resolution photos of the exterior, lobby and loading docks, 360-degree photos of some sites, floor plans, marketing notes and sales data."
Maybe time for us Swedes to upgrade our pricing!  ;-)

The hype in Skype

A Swede to be proud of. Niklas Zennström, and his Danish collegue Janus Friis, created Skype, got hold of 54 million customer (adding 150 000 a day!) and sold it to eBay for $2,6 billion.

The news --> 'eBay to nab Skype'  CNET article, 12th september
The tribute --> 'The tribute to Niklas'