This Post Is Worth 4 Million Words

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj8M44yDEx8

Corelogic Matrix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8DsdMb0zW8

Zillow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57R2Nv7ISZA

Trulia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB8EI0e_-Jc

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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Rob Hahn

Managing Partner of 7DS Associates, and the grand poobah of this here blog. Once called "a revolutionary in a really nice suit", people often wonder what I do for a living because I have the temerity to not talk about my clients and my work for clients. Suffice to say that I do strategy work for some of the largest organizations and companies in real estate, as well as some of the smallest startups and agent teams, but usually only on projects that interest me with big implications for reforming this wonderful, crazy, lovable yet frustrating real estate industry of ours.

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