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The Latest News from WFG National Title Company
ryantate
166
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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ryantate
218
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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ryantate
182
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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ryantate
203
WFG News
February 27, 2015

‘What the hell does Zillow mean?’ Watch the video

“What the hell does Zillow mean?” News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch famously said when asked at Real Estate Connect New York City whether “realtor.com” remains relevant. “We know what Realtor means.” Pop some popcorn and clear your schedule for the next half hour — News Corp. owns realtor.com operator Move…
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ryantate
133
WFG News
February 26, 2015

Zillow ‘integrated’ into tonight’s episode of ‘Portlandia’

It may be the most popular real estate search portal in the land, but fans of the IFC comedy “Portlandia” will see characters played by indie rocker Carrie Brownstein and comedian Fred Armisen using Zillow to search for a home in tonight’s episode for another reason: because the company paid…
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ryantate
216
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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ryantate
168
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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ryantate
186
WFG News
February 24, 2015

Judge keeps listings flowing to Trulia — for now

Trulia Inc., the nation’s second-most popular real estate listing site, has been granted a temporary restraining order to keep receiving listings from rival-owned ListHub. ListHub — which is owned by realtor.com operator Move Inc., a News Corp. subsidiary — announced Thursday that it had terminated its syndication agreement with Trulia…
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ryantate
170
WFG News
February 24, 2015

Could a portal merger change the face of real estate? A lesson from PayPal

In October 2002, eBay, the giant online auction site, purchased the fast-growing payments company, PayPal, for $1.5 billion. Founded at the end of 1998, PayPal had become the de facto way to pay for goods on eBay, powering 70 percent of auction payments. The purchase was the exclamation mark on…
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ryantate
170
WFG News
February 23, 2015

Trulia’s economist latest to leave company

Trulia’s chief economist is the latest to depart the company in the wake of the portal’s acquisition by Zillow, but says his research team will continue to produce housing reports “that will be different from Zillow’s and sometimes will kick their butts.” Jed Kolko. “From day one, Trulia’s leaders have…
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