…some cheeky predictions around Redfin (they go into the deadpool), Trulia (sell in 2nd quarter of 2009), Zillow (sell to Yahoo in 2 years), Craigslist (more happily paid fees on RE listings) and Bloodhound Unchained (attendees join the cult of Greg).
However, my favorite part of the entire post is Rudy’s comment: “i think 2.x is the real fake greg swann……”
(some names left anonymous to protect the innocent)
(Jay noticed this too!)
Phew! Now I think I’m caught up so that I can get back to regular updates!
Thanks for plug Dustin! Sorry I missed you but I was really sick, and ended up in bed the next 2 days. At least I was able to make the panel and meetup with alot of bloggers I havent seen since SF. Hopefully next time we can catch up again!
I agree with KK – thanks for doing this. Loved Jeff’s and Teresa’s photos, although I don’t recognize 1/2 the people (time to update those profile shots people!)
It was great to be able to hang out Dustin. See you in SF.
MP
Noah. You did a great job up on stage. You were on quite the lively and opinionated panel. Great stuff!
Ines: Looking back over the photos and video were one of the key ways I wrote this post. Looking over the “evidence” I remembered a ton of interesting conversations! 
Mike: It was great hanging out with you as well! SF should be a lot of fun and I know of at least one person/team that’s planning to add something special to the mix!
This is my favorite quote from your post dude:
“comScrore and Hitwise are measuring traffic on two different internets.”
Two different internets? Love that.
I came here looking for your contact info Dustin. After all the BS(ing) we did, we didn’t exchange cards. As for you comments about what WellcomeMat needs to do, you can bet that we are spending every waking hour of every day solving the exact issue that you point out. I got more than $5 placed on team WellcomeMat. We aren’t losing….period.
And btw…the issue of people having to market their videos for themselves is less about inefficiencies of WellcomeMat, and more about the fact that real estate search portals are lagging hard on their acceptance of video content. We don’t feel like distributing video content to generalist video portals (like YouTube) is at all worthwhile. Very few, if not zero, people search for real estate within generalist video sites and the SEO advantages are short term (not to mention that posting real estate videos within these sites is against most of their terms of service agreements). So, it’s all about context, and we have been t-ing up real estate portals to accept our content for a long time. We’re making headway.
Thanks for the mention Dustin. You are right on about the name. As you indicated we have indeed started a new company http://www.vendasta.com this is our “consulting company” and we already have quite a bit of business. We are also starting a real estate related venture (we have a new name) that will help real estate professionals utilize all social networks to connect to their social graph and get better insight and peripheral vision into consumer behaviour much earlier in the sales/buying cycle and to track and manage their online reputations.
I will be sure to keep you up to speed on our developments. We are currently raising some initial capital to aggressively pursue this software development. We feel a need for speed to market rather then bootstrapping it ourselves.
Best,
Brendan
Dustin,
You get all the rumors don’t you? I’m interested to hear more about #42, haha
Thanks for the recap…..you jarred my memory on a few things that otherwise may have faded into the google party abyss
Christian: Who needs business cards?
I just sent you an email!
-Dustin
Unable to attend in NYC, so thanks for the recap. Makes me wish it was July for the Connect08 in San Fran!
Dustin — I have to believe you didn’t miss anything worth passing on. This list is valuable on so many levels — thanks.
The common thread I keep hearing from those for whom I hold much respect, is the networking that went on in NY.
Would it be your contention also, the networking was the most valuable benefit taken away from the ‘Connect’?
Thanks again — the list is awesome.
Jeff: I’d have to agree that networking is the reason to go to a RE Connect conference. I’m positive there is LOTS and LOTS of great information being presented all day long, but I’m usually too busy meeting up with people to attend many of them.
#46: The REAL reason Dustin left Seattle.
Good seeing you and getting the chance to catch-up…
Dustin-
Didn’t get a chance to go…but after reading your post I have just gotten a big rush of adrenaline. Online Real Estate is just beginning…I better get back to work!
I still haven gotten #41, so don’t stop. I still feel dirty when I add tags
I’m downright excited about 2008!
And one final link for the year: check out Jon Washburn’s predictions for 2008. It’s a great read!
Why do I get a felling that #11 is not a “prediction”.
Todd,
No insider info for me; #11 is totally a prediction. The truth is I am sure Dustin could get a job anywhere, doing pretty much whatever he wanted in the real estate tech space. Just seemed like Curbed might be a good fit. (Plus it doesn’t hurt that they just landed some money from Mr. Inman.)
Dustin,
Thanks for the link!! Made my day.
I think Dustin’s going to stay a “free agent” in 2008. Many will get ‘ a piece of him”, but no one will “own” him. Frankly, no one deserves ALL of him.
Hey Dustin,
Just droppin’ by to wish you a Happy New Year!
RB
Happy New Year to everyone again!
I think I’ll shy away from publishing my plans for 2008 at this point!
I’ll be bold myself and summarize, but definitely check out Mike’s post for the details on his 2008 predictions:
A big focus on Zillow and not a bad prediction in the bunch. Nonetheless, here’s my opinions on Mike’s predictions:
Well put! on #3 above, I’ll clarify. I don’t see this as a result of firing or layoffs. I see it as a natural progression from folks that have been there for 4 years starting to get antsy and having other opportunities looking attractive. Along the lines of Ben Clark and Vanessa Fox.
Good list but I disagree with #5 and here’s 3 reasons why.
1 – Part of T’s traffic is simply from the volume of pages they have indexed w/ search engines (according to Yahoo over 10 mill) while Z has around 2 mill. This gets a lot of long tail searches. Z could easily improve their SEO designs and get a lot more pages indexed and probably will as they get listing data feeds from the RE community allowing them to go directly after the same long tail terms as T.
Z has a lot more natural inbound links (not from same domain) and content than T does and the SE’s love this, so with a little more focus on SEO Z is probably better positioned for growth.
2 – T is dependent on data provided by the real estate community as a whole while Z is independent. Any decisions on features or charges that T makes can have significant impact on who continues to provide listing data. (look at the charges for featured positions did). T must do everything to be pro-RE community to continue the relationships while Z can release items / features that are more pro-consumer, which in the long run will naturally generate more traffic.
Z has a value proposition was “values” not listing data, as the RE market continues down it’s current path, ARMS adjusting in record numbers in 08 and now short-sales don’t have phantom income – owners will be looking a values & mortgage options a lot more than before. Z may be in the perfect position to expand on these consumers thought process – What’s my home worth? > Can I refinance? > Do I short-sale?
3 – Lastly, Z model identifies multiple types of users much earlier in the RE process than T does for multiple reasons. This gives Z more time to develop loyal users for multiple reasons providing a larger base of diversified traffic, which is more sustainable.
Thoughts…
Jessie: You make some very good points… Zillow has definitely built a more all-encompassing structure (much more portal-like) than Trulia. However, I put more emphasis on the fact that Trulia has much better listing coverage today than Zillow.
And the only way that Zrulia will approach Trulia’s listing count is to strike very similar deals that make Zillow just as dependent on listing data from other sources. Similar to Trulia, my thoughts are that Zillow’s growth long-term is to continue enticing more brokers to give them a feed of their listings. Trulia has done a better job of this to date (they’ve also been at it a lot longer) and I think the executives at many of the big brokerages will be more hesitant to support Zillow.
It is definitely something to watch in 2008!
It’s true that Z will be as dependent but they will most likely make it free vs. T’s business model is to charge brokers / agents much like your ex-employer . In the long run may make it easier to get the listings, especially from the individuals.
I just think that searching real estate listings is so ubiquitous currently that the real value of T is only in it’s strength of it’s SEO emphasis on organic traffic which can be achieved by many others in the Re.net space if they elected to.
I can personally tell you must RE sites don’t get significant traffic simply due to poor site structure which makes them impossible to crawl.
This leads me to my prediction that there will be a significant dog fight for top organic spots in 2008 as the big brokers will get hip to spending some serious money on proper seo site design which will put big pressure on T for those local search results as the G, Y and M will tend return higher results for a local RE companies vs. T all things (seo wise) being equal.
Jessie: I’d definitely agree that in 2008 the big players will figure out how to do a better job capturing SEO value out of their sites. Although it can be deceivingly difficult to improve SEO on large sites once the site structure is in place. In that sense, Trulia definitely has a leg-up in that they did a better job designing their backend for SEO right from the beginning and it shows in their consistent organic growth.
Firstly congrats to Dustin on a great blog – now a must read for many of us.
I have just made a note in my calender to go back to this blog post in December 2008, I’m curious to see how accurate everyone is!!
Here at Trulia, we are very focused on building audience next year – we grew on average by around 10% every single month for at least the last 12 months and internal numbers show that’s around 3x from this time last year. I’m sure there is more growth to come. Yes, we do appear fairly high up the search engines, but we’re experiencing the fastest growth from non-search engine sources – ie people typing in Trulia.com into browsers and links from third party sites. As we’ve invested in building a good product, we increasingly expect more direct traffic and brand awareness.
There is some commentary about Trulia’s focus on homes for sale search and listings whereas other sites have a broader focus. A couple of thoughts on this:
1) searching for homes for sale from all the research I’ve seen is the most popular real estate research activity Hence, we think this is the most important thing to focus on. It’s a very hard problem to solve and we’ll be continuously working on it and improving it.
2) Trulia is most well known for it’s search experience which we launched first but the site now is much broader in terms of product offering. Our tens of thousands of city and neighborhood guides launched in 2006 were groundbreaking and prove to be very popular. We have assessor and transactional data on 60-70m homes in our database which we expose enabling home owners to monitor local values and transactions. Our heatmaps offer a compelling tool to visualize real estate trends and our community section, Trulia Voices (in my biased opinion) is the most useful consumer community based real estate research tool on the web. We’re continuing to invest in all these newer products in 2008 to scale them up. Keep your eye on Trulia.com in 2008 for lots more innovation!
Wishing everyone in the RE.net a very happy holidays. Sleep and eat well and rest for what is going to be a very exciting 2008!!
Pete
Pete: Thanks a bunch for the compliments and I definitely look forward to watching Trulia innovate in 2008! From all the research I’ve seen I’d have to completely agree with you that a great listing tool is the place to focus.
Best wishes this holiday season!
Daltonsbriefs 6:07 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
Thanks a ton for the list, a bunch of great links
sara b 6:11 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
Wow, someone was really paying attention last week. Great recap, a lot of stuff happened last week! It was great meeting you and getting to know you better at the google party.
Andy Kaufman 6:15 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
Thanks for the great recap Dustin!
You #41′d us
Dustin 6:18 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
Thanks Steve, Sara and Andy!
Sara: It was definitely a lot of fun meeting you as well! You were a rock-star taking the chance on bringing so many of us to the Googleplex!
Drew Meyers 6:21 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
Frankly, I don’t know how I managed to work at RE Connect either — I’m guessing the lack of sleep had something to do with it.
kristalk 6:25 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
With a summary like this, who needs to attend! Thanks for taking notes.
Paula Henry 6:26 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
Dustin – Thanks for the recap for those of us who could not attend. I am still waiting for Altos Research to head to the Midwest with their data.
Jim Duncan 6:35 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
Wow. Fantastic recap.
Pete Flint from Trulia.com 6:45 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
GREAT list, was fun catching up in NYC with everyone.
Two points of clarification.
1) Trulia expects to be profitable at some point in 2008, see last few paragraphs here http://www.truliablog.com/?p=261
2) comScore measures unique users and Hitwise measures individual visits which are two very different numbers, that’s part of the difference between the numbers.
See you all at Inman this summer.
Pete
rudy 7:19 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
hi dustin!
fantastic list. hanging with you is always a good time….4realz!
do you remember if we beat jon and sara at foosball at the google party? i had a little too much “google juice” if you know what i mean
best,
- rudy
p.s. glad you enjoyed the video
rerevealed 7:31 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
SWEET- Cliffnotes for Inman
KK’s right… who needs to go? We’ll just send you, a laptop, and a video crew next year and save on airfare and hotels
loren nason 8:14 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
#11 – I agree that villagemaker might be a success but only in the fact that they will sell a lot of accounts. But of those that use it the success will be few and far between. See my post about social networks
#40 – when i saw that video i shot soda out my nose from laughing so hard
#42 – Loren is going to SF Connect
loren nason 8:15 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
oops
i meant
#46 – Loren is going to SF Connect
Dustin 8:30 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
Pete: So sorry for getting the profitability facts wrong. It’s not a good excuse by any means, but I’m going to blame it on the fact that I heard this on a night that started with a lot of free pink drinks thanks to the wellcomemat boys, so I must have been mixing things up.
Lesson learned.
Brad Nix 8:57 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
Good stuff Dustin, as usual. I wish I had been there myself. You know Christian at WellcomeMat is from my neck of the woods here in Marietta, GA? We partied here over the weekend, just because.
Dustin 9:06 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
Interesting Brad… I had more a few drinks with Christian (and others from WellcomeMat) and walked away very impressed with that crew.
Jay Thompson 9:21 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
Great summary Dustin. Thanks for the props. Meeting you was one of the highlights of the trip!
Wellcomemat, pink vodka, my head still hurts…
Jay Thompson 9:26 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
Oh and as for #41 don’t ever stop. Many still don’t seem to get it. As for #35, I bent Lockhart’s ear about Phoenix. He wouldn’t budge off of Chicago…
Brian Brady 10:08 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
My only problem with this list is that #41 should always be #1- don’t ever stop the e-link-alization
Jessie B 11:11 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
Great post. Looking forward to seeing what #18 is about.
Damon Pace 11:38 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
Dustin. Yes I’m always thinking. I can’t stop myself. Great summary…but something tells me you’re leaving some stuff out.
Dustin 11:41 pm on January 13, 2008 Permalink |
LOL! Damon. You think so???