Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley: “Zillow is emerging as the latest big threat to newspapers, which are watching a series of Internet companies go after their dominant share of advertising and undercutting them with free services.”
As someone who worked 38 years for newspapers, it’s tough to watch a hallowed industry melt to a puddle. If papers saw themselves as a service rather than a product, they might have a chance in the online game. Brier makes several good points about the changing marketplace, not all of them consistent: He goes from a header warning “Watch out, newspapers!” to a concluding sentence: “It’s hard to compete with free…but the site also has a long, long way to go before it has papers’ reach and market penetration.” (I guess Brier didn’t need a disclosure statement there!)
And that’s just the problem. If newspapers simply take the money while letting “free” services compete on price (or non-price), they’ll lose mindshare and brand value when, inevitably, critical mass shifts. Craigslist would not exist (in its current popularity) if papers had simply started giving away classifieds. But they couldn’t leave the revenues on the table.
(Another debate is whether, particularly in a down market, the Internet is changing the business of real-estate. I know three people who sold their homes via Craigslist and were much happier doing so — starting with, no seller’s commission. Dudley rightly notes the “channel conflict” Zillow faces as well in doing brokerage deals: Whose interests is Zillow defending, buyers or sellers?)
Dudley ID’s the progression here: Craigslist, Google, Yahoo, Zillow. I’d add Facebook to the list as well. But the real threat to newspapers began with the World Wide Web. The Web is the newspaper. Everything else is just a tweak in the machine.
Nobody ever read a computer by flashlight during a winter power outage.
No one ever lined their kitchen cabinets with copies of Craigslist.
You can’t wrap up fish guts with Zillow.
It’s important to remember what newspapers are really for. You assume people read them. Such is the arrogance of journalists! Show me anywhere else you can get so much wrapping paper or box stuffer for fifty cents. Newspapers are indispensable. Their contents … not so much. Producing the content merely provides a hobby for people too lazy to go to law school.
I pee on the PI and burry them in rabbit holes, but hey that is just me.
@5 You couldn’t find a rabbit hole if I sprayed Chanel No. 5 on it.
Dog, you don’t want to find MY hole. Trust me on this.
http://i.pbase.com/u11/kepha/u.....560035.jpg
That link doesn’t work, Roger.
According to Zillow, I’m rich beyond the dreams of avarice…
No word, however, on the value of single-room, dirt floor, hole-in-the-ground residences of no more than two square feet, no utilities, no running water, outdoor plumbing, and poor ventilation that are of indeterminate ownership.
The Piper
@9 It just worked for me, so your computer and/or computer operator must be defective.
@11
It comes back “403 Forbidden”.
1/2/3/4 C’mon, Roger. Stop beating around the bush.
Zillow suffers from the same disadvantage of all pure-play e-commerce, to whit:
How many of y’all have read it while taking a dump?
ArtFart, have you tried the new iPhone or iPod Touch? With Wi-fi you can be constipated all day long and read merrily along on any Web site.
Now you or I ain’t gonna do this but the kids…if they can IM on the toilet they sure as hell can read this blog ;^)