Startup Meme

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to the RSS feed of Startup Meme.

Zillow, a very impressive real estate service has become interactive by adding Q&A to every house in its index. Users will now be able to ask questions about the house and any one else could answer it. The answers could come from individuals living in the locality, real estate agents trying to sell the house or trying to boast price of a house near by. All answers can be rated as well.

The Q&A will be displayed right on the Zillow front page, but will not be geo targeted, i.e a sample of all questions would be displayed instead of the ones relevant to your location. Zillow is also planning to launch a personalized “real estate” homepage. Another feature that has made into this release is a personal profile, enabling all users to have a page where their questions, answers and helpfulness stats will be listed. This will tell a lot to the buyer about the person answering his questions. Another very important yet very subtle feature is the ability of users to flag a house “for sale”. This will really add the value, generate fresh listings and allow sellers to sell quickly.

Zillow has also introduced a new self serving advertisement system which allows ads to be target on the basis of zip code, homes for sale, local service, companies. Street Advisor is also a social network build around the concept of sharing information and reviews of the neighborhood, although it is not targeted towards enabling people to buy and sell houses it will definitely be a useful service once it has enough data.

Zillow claims to have 4 million unique visitors a month, amongst whom 150,000 are agents. The service is really nice, and addictive and is now building social features on top of it base service. The company has raised $57 million in venture capital till date.

Read: Webware and Techcrunch

Subscribe