Big news! Redfin upgraded its website last night to improve the performance of map-based search, which is quite zippy now. The site has been creaking under the load of more than a million new visitors this spring, so you’ll see more performance improvements over the next few months. The site also looks a little different… Read More
Add one more commodity that China and Russia export for U.S. consumption: Internet stocks. The emergence of Internet titans like Baidu, Renren and now Yandex is being hailed as a coming-out party for Chinese and Russian entrepreneurialism, but what’s striking about that party is its venue, U.S. stock exchanges. Why would Renren, the so-called Facebook… Read More
While some housing pundits are talking about demand being “overwhelmed by supply” and others are throwing out estimates of an “excess supply” of over 3 million homes, buyers that we are serving across the country keep telling us the same thing over and over this spring: “Selection stinks!” Worse yet, when they do finally find… Read More
Quick! Name the top 10 publicly traded consumer internet businesses in the US. When you woke up Thursday morning, the list was: Google: $171 billion market capitalization (26% annual revenue growth) Amazon: $90 billion (38% growth) eBay: $43 billion (14% growth) Priceline: $26 billion (38% growth) Yahoo!: $21 billion (-24% growth) Netflix: $13 billion (45% growth)… Read More
Hours after news broke that Osama bin Laden was dead, Jeff Jarvis wrote that “Twitter is our Times Square on this victory day.” The New York Times published a photo of the actual Times Square, where firefighters cheered the announcement. I sat in a cab, watching the tale of the tribe scroll by on Twitter…. Read More
The United States is becoming a startup factory. It’s a very good trend for the U.S. and for entrepreneurs. But this post is how it must feel different than it once did, when startups were hand-crafted in a basement or a garage, and stayed there much longer than they now do. First, a few numbers…. Read More
If you’ve been shopping for a home lately, you’ve probably encountered more than a few listings that are either bank-owned (REO) or short sales. In some of Redfin’s markets (Las Vegas, Phoenix, and San Diego) distressed sales make up more than half of what’s selling these days: With prices that are often considerably lower than… Read More
What I’ve never understood about critics of Microsoft’s Internet strategy is what you expect Microsoft to do instead: just give up, and pretend the Internet doesn’t exist? A more realistic strategy may be to give ground on the Web, but not the Internet. This after all, is what Apple has done, with iPhone and iTunes,… Read More
It isn’t easy building a network of high-quality real estate agents, even if you’re a real estate agent yourself. Redfin just removed 50 partner agents from our tiny, exclusive partner program, most in the past few weeks. Forty two left because the customers we surveyed about their service so far had mixed reviews. Those are easy… Read More