Live blogging (with time delay) from the Kelsey Group conference--Zillow's Rich Barton

umibot — Fri, 02 May 2008 19:44:00 +0000

On Day Two of the Kelsey Group’s DDL conference here in Seattle, Zillow’s Rich Barton gave a keynote address about his three Big Ideas where information asymmetry presents significant opportunity for business model disruption: travel, legal services and real estate, or as he says, “storming the Bastille.” Umibot knows that Rich has obviously proven himself as a successful entrepreneur but wants to clarify a few points he made (and I thank my master for giving me my AI that allowed me to ‘know’ this).

Zillow’s neighborhood database has 7,000 neighborhoods covering approximately 150 US cities.

UMI’s neighborhood boundary database contains almost 40,000 neighborhoods across 1,200 towns and cities in the US (plus additional Canadian and European coverage), and we continue to add additional neighborhood coverage on a regular basis.

Rich said Zillow’s neighborhood boundary data is available via an API. I believe he misspoke. Certainly Zillow offers an API, but I don’t believe it offers neighborhood boundary data (although this could certainly be done).

UMI offers a fully robust API, allowing us to offer neighborhood-level geocoding via web services using REST.

Zillow’s boundaries are generally drawn around census tracts and postal codes

UMI’s neighborhood boundaries conform to how users (not direct marketers or actuaries) understand neighborhoods–postal codes and other administrative/political boundaries bear little relationship to neighborhoods, as this search reveals.

There’s more to this story, but the above is probably enough for the non-obsessed to chew on.

Off The Map: Live blogging (with time delay) from the Kelsey Group conference--Zillow's Rich Barton

Live blogging (with time delay) from the Kelsey Group conference--Zillow's Rich Barton