Recently Zillow.com, the nations 8th largest Real Estate site, introduced a new feature called “Hot or Not” (I think someone there is a Fantasy Baseball freak, because Yahoo Fantasy Baseball has had a feature like that for a couple years!). Anyway, it’s a kind of a game/survey and is designed for people to log on and vote! for their favorite Listing, bedroom, backyard, bathroom etc…Is this really the direction a Real Estate Search site wants to go in?
“Zillow’s new Dueling Digs game isn’t that much fun.
But I suspect I’m not the target market for this sort of game. On line real estate is strictly a utilitarian activity for me (wow, the presbyterian Scot in me really comes out with that sentence).
I use the tools of Real Estate 2.0 to evaluate the market and to help me find a new home to live in. I don’t really go for the whole real estate porn thing — I get my kicks in other ways…”
Far be it from to “bite the hand that feeds me”.so to speak. After all I do write for the Zillow GeekEstateBlog and don’t want to appear anti-Zillow, but opinions are only valuable when they are heart felt. Even when they are contrary. I just think the time and dollars of such a powerful and potentially informative consumer based website, could be better spent on a technology that would have a direct benefit on the search experience, or perhaps help them create a on line appraisal tool that better reflects actual pricing in each market!
Your comments are always welcome 
“The Coach”
1 response so far ↓
Rebecca Levinson // April 14, 2008 at 7:51 pm |
Consumers look at real estate online for all different reasons. So the purpose of this tool for entertainment seems just fine. So many sites with real estate listings,the more serious can use the other search tools or search somewhere else. People will always be curious about real estate, might as well make it a little fun.