Postlets acquired:
Zillow today has announced their acquisition of Postlets as its syndication partner, just one quarter after Postlets announced their hitting the milestone of having surpassed 500,000 registered users syndicating to “13 real estate and social media websites.”
Postlets was founded in 2005 by Asher Matsuda and Raymond Chen and has run a lean boostrap since, with a reported 350,000 listings entered to date.
Matsuda and Chen are now full time Zillow employees and say “rest assured that Postlets will continue to function the way it does today — and remain free.” Postlets will continue to send listings to its current distribution partners.
A new tool for Zillow
“Postlets is a terrific tool for agents, property managers and landlords to promote their listings and manage their online presence,” said Spencer Rascoff, Zillow CEO. “We are very excited to have the Postlets brand and its talented founders join our team.”
Real estate consultant Brian Boero notes, “It will be interesting to see if Zillow makes the same commitments Move made to maintain impartiality in the reporting of syndication results – meaning, for example, that Trulia clicks/views will be reported just as clearly as traffic derived from sending listings to Zillow.”
What is Zillow telegraphing?
The three major real estate search sites each have a media partner and this acquisition is in line with our prediction of a lineup of continued acquisitions. Given that we’ve seen Move, Inc. acquire ListHub for syndication and Trulia acquire Movity for talent and technology, does Zillow’s move telegraph who they consider their primary competitor?
