Have you seen Pictometry's aerial photographs of your home on MSN's local.live, their "birds eye" view? Wouldn't they be great for Real Estate? The pictures are already available on much of Zillow.com, with schematic maps and the Zillow/schematic integrated. How neat for your Website.
Just take your Website, add Zillow's Open API and mix. What's even better is it's FREE. What's the last thing you got free from the NAR, your local Association or Realtor.com?
MSN has another 2 1/2 years to go with the rights to sell Pictometry's aerial photos for B2B applications. When Pictometry signed the deal with MSN, Pictometry needed the money and the exposure. But Pictometry has grown so quickly that they're now hoping MSN will want out of their contract.
In a recent talk, Dick Kaplan, President of Pictometry, said he can hardly wait for the expiration of the MSN contract. He looks forward to the expiration of the contract so Pictometry can shop its pictures and technology without MSN's "help".
When I asked Dick Kaplan, "Why didn't Microsoft buy Pictometry?" His answered, "They couldn't afford us."
One of the big users of Pictometry's pictures and technology trough MSN is Zillow.com, "The Little Home Search Engine That Could." Richard Barton, of Zillow, from Microsoft, by way of Expedia, is one of the first and biggest users of Pictometry's photos for Real Estate.
While Homestore and Realtor.com are still trying to hide their pasts; and the NAR and Realtor.com are still trying to hide their data, Zillow teamed up with:
- Google for keyword relevant search ads
- MSN for its birds eye 45% angle pictures from Pictometry
- Yahoo to supply Zillow results for Yahoo's Real Estate Info
- Lending Tree/ IAC/ Barry Diller/ Ask.com for Loan quotes
- How did Zillow leave out AOL, the other one of the top 5 General Search Engines?
You can tell a lot about a man by the company he keeps. A Real Estate Search Engine, too.
GOT NEXT!
Happy Searching.
WebHomeUSAblog; The Blog of Real Estate Search Marketing
I agree these new mapping technologies are awesome! Have you seen the pictometry used on Cyberhomes.com? I think it's better than Zillow because they have more coverage...almost double.
Posted by: Reggie | December 28, 2006 at 04:05 PM
Reading through your stuff I see you definitely have an axe to grind with the Move folks... It's too bad because they are releasing the very same products you are claiming they are behind on...
To give you an idea, here's a blog post from last month on some of the mapping stuff on Move.com: http://blogs.move.com/blog/2006/12/20/new-mapping-on-move/
Posted by: Dustin | January 12, 2007 at 06:27 PM
Zillow "Guess-Idiots" appear to rely on public tax records that in some cases haven't been updated in twenty-five years. The zestimator is a sketchy tool to rely on. I believe it's best to use a Professional Realtor when appraising property.
Posted by: Ron Asteak | August 10, 2007 at 11:18 PM