Zillow Revolution in Realty Estate - Case Study Example

Zillow has 2.3% market shares with 4 million visitors per month. It uses Web 2.0 business model of Google and Network Television. Zillow makes money by the way of selling eyeballs and not by selling homes to buyers. On July 18th, 2006, Zillow landed a big deal with Yahoo to serve as a data point on Yahoo's real estate and search sites.[www.crunchbase.com] Moreover, Legg Mason Capital Management has invested $30 Millions in Zillow.com towards expansion of staff of 155 employees which includes 20 person national advertising sales team.

In addition to Legg Mason, other institutions that have invested in Zillow.com are put down in the following table. From the above table it is evident that the corporate companies at a huge level are continuously funded Zillow.com. Zillow has stated that it is a media company and generates revenue from online advertising; however, it also holds real estate brokerage licenses in certain states. With such huge amount of funding, zillow has launched new features like Neighbourhood's, Discussions, and Personalized Home Page to foster social network to catch up with Trulia.

It is evident from the above data that most of the online realtors are established much before than Zillow. Founded in 1973, Zillow gives a stiff competition to Realtor.com, whereas others are marginal ahead or behind. Just within a span of year, Zillow has been ranked 669th website most visited by the US citizens. Whereas, RE/MAX which has been founded much before Zillow is lagging behind at 740th whereas Trulia which started in 2005 is ranked at 1,160. Zillow captures eyeballs through advertisements for its earnings, which has made it successful in just 18 months from its launching period, has got 4.

4 million unique users in the country, by August 2007. [http://moneycentral.msn.com]Zillow competes with Trulia, HomeGain, HouseValues, PropertyShark.com, RealEstate.com, Redfin, and others. It can be said that Zillow is facing competition from Google too. Because Google has the best keyword search, while latter has home search. Google is looking to solve the problems of local search, vertical search and personalized search. Zillow is the answer to local search, vertical search and personalized search.

Real estate agents, who are concerned that their role may be diminished as more people rely on Zillow, statethat the site does not give an accurate reflection and that other factors must be taken into consideration in buying or selling a home. Realtors with specific market knowledge are more likely to know specific factors affecting the sale of a home such as the overall condition of the home, domestic issues such as divorce, job transfer pressures. Consumers have continued to rapidly change their behavior in the last 5