Zillow Leads the Social Networking Charge on the Real Estate Market
I’m not sure quite when it happened, but at some point in my life the typical cycle of conversations that I tend to hear in social settings shifted from movies, sports, and the pursuit of the opposite sex to work, family, and the real estate market.
As the popularity of social networking websites continues to expand from kids looking to decorate their online profile, flirt, and make friends to niche interests that appeal to more mature audiences (LinkedIn is winning in the business networking space, for instance) it’s a no brainer that real estate will be a highly sought after territory.
Real estate site Zillow has just unveiled “community Web pages for more than 6,500 neighborhoods in 130 U.S. cities” according to John Cook’s Venture Blog. People will be able to add media to personal profiles and presumably interact with others in the neighborhood.
I suspect that home owners who have no interest in MySpace may be extremely tempted to be lured into social networking through web communities based around local community and real estate prices and sales. Zillow, which already does a pretty great job of showing satellite imagery with street names and home sale prices graphics laid on top, is in an ideal position to gain significant share of the market here.
With so many social networking sites competing for audience, it’s smart to base new ventures in already established web services. People already interested in Zillow may well become long time users because of the added social networking features, which may in turn lure new users into the fold as well. The recently folded Backfence – which tried to tap into local communities as well – did not have the same leverage to build membership.
