If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I’d submit that a video is worth a million words. Therefore, this post is worth 4 million words, as these four videos tell a tale far more powerfully than your poor scribe ever could.
Make the jump to see for yourself.
Why the MLS Is On A Death Spiral
All the QQing around Zillow’s Coming Soon feature got me talking to a bunch of people from around the country, and one of them turned me on to something rather interesting. Countless pixels have been sacrificed to commenters, gurus, pundits, experts, and magicians of the MLS talking about threat to the MLS this, threat to the MLS that, proper role of the MLS, MLS rules and policies and so on and so forth.
God knows I’ve added my fair share to the pixel-slaughter and will continue to do so. But… here, in 4 million words (or equivalent thereof) is one main reason why the MLS is on a death spiral.
MarketLinx Fusion
Corelogic Matrix
Zillow
Trulia
It’s 2014. MarketLinx FusionMLS is one of the top selling MLS platforms, with the largest installed base (I believe) of any MLS software platform. At 0:37, I paused the video and went to find my Backstreet Boys concert T-shirt, because it felt like 1998 all over again. Matrix is widely considered as one of the best MLS systems in the industry. But at 0:45, my lips formed a silent “NOOOOO!!!!” like the Edvard Munch painting.
We can spend another couple of million words on the Zillow/Trulia version of the Add New Listings module, but… why bother? You watch the videos and tell me which one you would rather use for the mundane, yet critical, task of adding a new listing into some database.
Questions? Comments? Thoughts?
-rsh
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