Zillow + Diverse Solutions
Zillow announced today that it has acquired Diverse Solutions, a six year old, California based IDX company in an effort to expand their “total addressable market as a technology platform for agents,” following their last major acquisition of Postlets.com. Both acquisitions are of companies that help real estate agents market property listings.
The $7.8 million acquisition was made in cash and stock and the 18 employees will continue to operate their branded services for its consumers, while CEO and founder, Justin LaJoie, has been named the VP of industry solutions at Zillow and will report to Zillow CEO, Spencer Rascoff.
“We’re very impressed by the products and team that Diverse Solutions has assembled, and we look forward to offering agents these new solutions for powering their websites and marketing strategies,” said Rascoff. “With this acquisition, Zillow now can offer agents a broad suite of valuable tools to market themselves across the Web and mobile – whether on their own websites via Diverse Solutions, on Zillow, or across multiple sites via our listings distribution service, Postlets.”
“We are thrilled to join Zillow, and excited for the opportunity to introduce Diverse Solutions’ suite of services to millions of real estate agents who use Zillow every month,” said LaJoie.
Erica Ramus
November 2, 2011 at 5:26 pm
How does this company compare to IDX Broker? Just wondering …
Kevin Cottrell
November 2, 2011 at 6:12 pm
Interesting point from a top player in the real estate website/IDX industry – his take: If Zillow works in lots of widgets and links into the WP Toolbox and websites (previously Diverse) they stand to have a legion of agents inadvertently creating a massive amount of links back to the mother ship (Zillow.com) which would knock even more local players out from an SEO standpoint. Check off another one for Real Geeks as a better bet 🙂 Should be interesting times huh Lani ?
I think it makes agents/brokers think twice about long-term risk (based on the recent 'neighborhood' experience post acquisition. Should shift even more momentum (already strongly growing) towards Real Geeks given they have a high performance stand alone and WordPress IDX solution and no conflict.
Erica – IDX Broker is like comparing a Toyota to a Ferrari in terms of solutions when compared to Real Geeks.
jarvisteam
November 4, 2011 at 4:45 pm
LOL – That's not a fair comparison at all when it comes to IDXBroker vs Diverse. Their core products aren't that far off.
IDXBroker has been a great option for us, I'd love someone to produce some real analytics on the IDX providers to see which is "actually best."
My take is that it's not what is best that gets "play" it's what is most convenient for the average agent.
mayareguru
November 2, 2011 at 11:21 pm
So does that mean that Zillow won't scrape anymore?
Total congrats to Spencer and Justin, awesome news for them!
As someone who is using Diverse Solutions via my new Virtual Results site, I certainly love my pals at Zillow, but I won't be paying to have links back to them and build their SEO, I am trying to dominate my own market and don't need the competition thank you very much.
Although…. I suspect that a major catalyst was the work that the amazing Drew Meyers has been doing with DS on the Virtual Results product. Great stuff I must say, and very affordable. Although…. I might prefer a choice in IDX feeds… just my thoughts.