The Online Real Estate Marketing landscape just got a little more crowded.
7/17/07 marked the launch of TeraBitz.com, the latest entry in the battle for the top of the hill in Real Estate Search Marketing.
TeraBitz comes from the West Coast/CA/Silicon Valley and is funded with VC money. Who'da guessed?
TeraBitz joins Zillow, Trulia, Google Earth, Yahoo Real Estate among others in the pursuit of the Holy Grail of Internet Marketing, "The Google of Real Estate". Can the National MLS: online, free and funded by advertising, be far off?
As opposed to the Vertical Sites supplying value estimates, maps, or discount services; TeraBitz takes the Portal/Aggregator approach, mashing-up information from, and links to, many sources for neighborhood, Zip Code and Listing data, customized by Zip Code. TeraBitz offers the One-Stop-Shop approach for home search.
TeraBitz's data and info are aggregated from between 30 and 35 sources. These source icons can be dragged and dropped into 9 display boxes on your personalized Home Search Home Page/Home Search Dashboard.
If the companies snaring the home buyers and sellers when they first decide to buy or sell their home, can also become portals, the buyers' pattern for online home search will already be set. The other "Google-Of-Real-Estate" wannabees will have to grovel for the home search scraps left by the first company to win the hearts and minds of home searchers.
Ashfah Munshi, CEO and founder of TeraBitz, claims Terabitz is not competing with existing Real Estate sites like Zillow and Trulia. He views these sites as partners, supplying the data and information to his site and his customers.
Zillow and Trulia derive most of their income by driving traffic to their sites and selling ads on their click stream. They traffic in eyeballs. Eyeballs stolen by TeraBitz with Zillow or Trulia data is stolen income.
TeraBitz 10 Million VC dollars from Tudor Capital doesn't come up to Zillow's $57 Million, but it does indicate the value seen in Real Estate Search, and Real Estate Search's potential to solve the Local Search Problem, which are still on the VC's radar screens.
On 7/24/07 TeraBitz was accused of data-scrapping, or illegally/improperly using data from sites like Trulia and Google Base. Several brokers felt incorrect attribution was made for property listing data. TeraBitz acted quickly to fix the attributions or remove the data feed, offering to pay licensing fees for the data.
Welcome to the fray, TeraBitz. Hopefully your terabytes won't be terror bites. And with your Terabitz, you didn't byte off more than you can chew.
Adapt Or Die! Happy Searching.
WebHomeUSAblog; The Blog of Real Estate Search Marketing
Cliff, great info. You peeked my interest enough to go check it out. They certainly do have a lot of info. I will have to spend some additional time there and study it further.
Yes, I think you are right...in that the National MLS is just around the corner.
However, there will always be confidential information on the MLS that can not be shared with the public.
- Gena Riede
Posted by: Gena Sells Sacramento | July 26, 2007 at 03:44 PM
Correction above...sorry wasn't thinking...should have been "piqued."
- Gena Riede
Posted by: Sacramento Real Estate | July 26, 2007 at 05:36 PM