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Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Follow-Up on Realtor.com Exec’s Defection to Zillow

[Published Mar. 27, 2014, in the Jeffco editions of the Denver Post's YourHub section]

My lead topic last week was about Zillow’s raid on realtor.com’s executive suite, specifically Errol Samuelson’s move from NAR’s flagship website to up-and-coming Zillow.com.

This past Saturday, Inman News released a 16-minute video interview with Samuelson in which he explained his motivation for making that move. What he said made a lot of sense to me. In essence, he seemed to be saying that Zillow is more dynamic, more innovative, more responsive to new ideas than realtor.com, and that’s what drew him to make the move.  I see that difference, too.

Samuelson described an environment at Zillow where young programmers in their 20’s are in meetings with top executives and promote ideas which can and often are implemented or at least tested after the meeting ends. They can test a new idea on “one or two million visitors” to their website and quickly see whether it’s a good idea and either scrap, modify or expand it. He said it’s great to have a team that can implement new ideas quickly.

Here's the video...


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