WFG News
March 6, 2015

Feds tap Zillow’s chief economist for open-data initiative

Zillow Chief Economist Stan Humphries has been named to an advisory panel that the federal government says will help it do a better job unleashing vast troves of data to foster economic growth and promote better decision-making — including census data served up by real estate search sites. Humphries, creator of…
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WFG News
March 6, 2015

Realtor.com climbs in rankings, Trulia’s new look, Homes.com picking up steam

Zillow Group has given Trulia’s home page a subtle makeover, which could foreshadow other changes that would help differentiate the nation’s most popular real estate search portals now that they’re under the same roof. Before it was acquired by Zillow, Trulia’s home page featured an image of a couple holding hands, strolling up a…
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WFG News
March 4, 2015

Why portal changes will never affect top agents

There is a storm of confusion surrounding the Zillow-Trulia merger, especially when it comes to how the alliance will affect agents. You have to wonder how brokerages, MLSs (multiple listing services) and individual agents who feed listings into the two big portals are feeling about the idea that the leads…
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WFG News
March 3, 2015

Trulia launches collaborative search feature

A new collaborative home search feature from Trulia allows homebuyers and renters to create Pinterest-like “boards” of homes they find on the portal that they can keep track of and share with friends, family and their agent. When consumers who are logged into their Trulia account save homes (by selecting the heart icon that lives next to…
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WFG News
March 2, 2015

Jeff Goldblum’s latest role: Apartments.com mastermind

Jeff Goldblum plays Brad Bellflower, the fictional mastermind of apartments.com. Real estate brokers and agents have become adept at using the Internet and social media to grow their business. But suddenly TV is blazing hot, with big brand names like Zillow, realtor.com, Century 21, Coldwell Banker, Re/Max, Redfin and Berkshire…
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WFG News
March 2, 2015

Machine v. Realtor, making DoJ go away, and staying on the right side of the law

Loquacity on machine v. Realtor As I perused Trulia’s 2014 annual report (just posted on the SEC’s website this morning), I was struck by the staggering amount of data the online real estate giant generates and keeps track of. Trulia says it manages “over one terabyte of data on a…
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WFG News
February 27, 2015

Zillow’s drinking the Trulia Kool-Aid, realtor.com gets feisty

Realtor.com operator Move Inc. has been feisty out of the gate with its new rival Zillow Group Inc. Just a week after Zillow’s acquisition of Trulia closed, the two already have a new court date. On March 12 a judge will decide whether Move’s syndication platform ListHub can cut its listings feed to…
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WFG News
February 27, 2015

Zillow and Trulia say they’re still competitors

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Executives with Zillow and Trulia told a roomful of multiple listing service leaders that the two sites will continue to compete even though the top two listing portals are now under the same roof. “Beating each other up, sharpening each other, for us that’s going to be…
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WFG News
February 25, 2015

Behind-the-scenes look at the Zillow-Trulia-News Corp. listings battle

Real estate is an industry full of people who cooperate and compete with each other at all levels, sometimes uneasily. With potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue at stake, this is especially clear among the now top two rivals for consumer traffic in the real estate space:…
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WFG News
February 25, 2015

Zillow secures direct feed from big Georgia MLS

Georgia Multiple Listing Service, serving nearly 27,000 members with a total of over 54,000 listings, is the latest large MLS to sign up to send Zillow its listings in a direct feed. “The direct agreement with Zillow gives our members the opportunity to decide on how to best market their…
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