Are Zoomf and Nestoria imitating Trulia?
We found this via FREM this morning:
Currently in beta, Zoomf is aiming to officially launch in Q1 2007, offering property listings in London before expanding its coverage to the rest of the UK and abroad. ... Zoomf will be competing with the likes of UK-based Nestoria and California-based Trulia, which we think remains one of the benchmarks in vertical search.Joel Burslem feels that Zoomf (or‘Zoom F’ or ‘Zooomph’ - honestly, we're still trying to figure that out as well) may look familiar to his US audience, because "its search results pages look awfully similar to Trulia’s" and that imitation "really is the sincerest form of flattery."
Galen Ward of Rain City Guide and SharkPrices.com comments that Trulia’s interface is "taking over the UK via Zoomf and Nestoria!"
Wow, strong words indeed, and we want your opinion.
Are Zoomf, Nestoria, OnOnemap, Trovit and to a leeser degree Primemove and Onemove merely imitations of Trulia and other US search sites?
Or is there something unique, different and potentially rewarding about the new UK property search industry that the world can learn something from.
C'mon UK - defend your turf!
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10 comments:
Hi,
Ed from Nestoria here.
We're the first to admit that Trulia is an innovator that inspired us (and doubtlessly others). It's a great site, and it's been interesting to watch them evolve. But many other sites inspired us as well. The pace of innovation in search the last few years has been phenomenal.
There are of course major differences between the US and UK property markets (MLS being the most obvious example). We wouldn't have invested our time and effort unless we were confident that our team's extensive search experience would allow us to create (and then evolve) a compelling UK property search experience.
We believe many of the things that people say are innovative about our site will soon become standard. As an example, map mashups are springing up everywhere:
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2006/10/24/old-uk-media-group-gets-on-the-mashup-cluetrain/
and rightfully so; it's a great user experience. The challenge for us - the one we spend most of our time on, and the reason we're excited about being in this space - is the innovation around all the things that are much harder to 'see'. A good example of this (one of many) is relevancy. This is why we invest our time developing what we call "Nestoria Rank"
http://blog.nestoria.co.uk/2006/09/25/what-is-nestoria-rank/
So I guess, yes, at first glance, we, like Trulia, are a property search service with maps. We think (and I'll bet the guys at Trulia will agree) that property search is in it's infancy and much of the innovation is still to come. We're working hard to make sure it comes from the UK ;-)
I look forward to seeing what your readers think.
Nestoria Rank truly is a great innovation; thanks Ed !
I'd stick with my original statement - the interface is amazingly similar to Trulia. That said, the Zoomf index is really hot (and original as far as I know). It's nice and clean.
Good artists borrow, great artists steal. (that's stolen, by the way)
-Galen
ShackPrices.com
I've seen rip-offs of webpages down to the logo. Especially from China.
In the UK property search only zeebo.co.uk comes to mind who at point even had the Trulia search button (same filename) and lots of copy&paste from Trulia in their CSS files. They still use 'Rightmove' in their title. Compare http://www.zeebo.co.uk/btn_search.gif and http://images.trulia.com/stage/images/btn_search.gif
Zoomf and Nestoria are not very innovative in design. They build a simple to use vertical search engine and there are only so many possibilities when you need a map and advanced search option on a page. You either have the option left or on the top.
The size of the search index, ranking of results, little ads and ease of use are (in my opinion) important. So far they're both eager to grow and (based on the 'about' pages) have knowledge in building search engines.
OnOneMap was innovative when they started, that was before Trulia started. But they're stall. No new features, still a hard to use map. Extate is innovative in keyword extraction, I'm interested what they come up with next.
Let's review in 6 months. I'm sure there will be at least one new player, all websites need to proof that they can earn money (ads, fees?). Trulia will continue to add clutter to their pages and the UK pages will have to show how much innovation is possible.
So far Web2.0 webpage are full of surprises. Be it vertical search for travel, jobs, classifieds or real estate.
Markus
com search option
Here's some useful info on com search option
which you might be looking for. The url is: http://www.jaldisearch.com/
They do look similar you are right, but how many ways can you format a search box?
What I really like about ZOOMF though is their price guide statistics, it's pretty sexy. http://www.zoomf.com/london/chelsea/guide/buy/
And also there are lots of other subtle innovations that make the interface more advanced.
What nonsense.
So what if they look the same - even if they used the same exact HTML and CSS it isn't a case for any kind of copyright infringement since you can't copyright HTML and CSS.
I don't think Nestoria or Zoomf need to defend themselves.
What I think is more relevant is the data these sites are displaying. Namely data, descriptions and photographs taken from estate agent websites all of which are bound by copyright and whose usage does not fall under fair use.
An example from Winkworth's site (which seems to feature heavily on all these sites):
The copyright and all other intellectual property rights in this website including all text, graphics, photos, code, files and links belong to WFL and the website may not be reproduced, transmitted or stored in whole or in part without WFL’s prior written consent.
Estate agents have spent a considerable amount of money on their branding (which includes publicising their URL). They have done this because they want to make THEIR sites a destination for homefinders. In the meantime they are uploading their properties to Rightmove until such time as their sites gain enough traction as to not require them.
Rightmove has implicit permission (by virtue of the upload process) to display photographs, floorplans and descriptions taken by the estate agent.
Do Nestoria, Zoomf and Extate have the same permission?
It will be interesting when the bigger estate agent chains notice that their sites are being scraped and that their copyrighted work is being taken and displayed on these portals.
The ensuing action they take (collectively or non-collectively) may well affect the very existance of these sites.
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Here's some useful info on mumbai search option
which you might be looking for. The url is: http://www.jaldisearch.com/
Hi,
You may like to know that we added new features to OnOneMap this week (see the press release). Love to hear what you think of our update.
Regards.
Hi Philip,
congratulations and thanks for letting us know about the changes at OneOneMap. Glad to see you guys are still making waves. I'll follow up with a more detailed post in a few days. keep up the good work and stay in touch!
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