In the inaugural edition of our new interview series entitled “Three Questions,” Real Opinionated has sought out a man who is undeniably at the forefront of web 2.0 innovation. Welcome Drew Meyers, Community Relations Specialist from Zillow.com. No, he’s not the founder of Zillow. But he does know what he’s talking about, and we happen to have access to him. Sorry I don’t roll in higher Zillow circles.

Zillow has been taking a beating of late from some prominent bloggers, so we thought we might give Drew the opportunity to show up and “keep it real” without any interference. His answers have not been edited in any way, shape, or form.

Once and for all, what is Zillow’s intent as it pertains to the new features recently rolled out and how does it affect the web-savvy Realtor?

Zillow is an online real estate community with the goal of helping consumers find answers to their real estate questions. A year ago, we launched with Zestimates to give people a starting point to answer “what’s this home worth?” Other questions we’ve begun to help people ask and find answers for: “what remodels or additions have been done to this home?”; “which homes are for sale and by whom?”; and which owners might be willing to move for the right price?”. With Home Q&A, we’re trying to open up more and more valuable information on homes for everyone to see. We’ve given home buyers the ability to ask questions about a home before they buy; questions such as: ‘Is there a “secret” route downtown that avoids traffic?’ or ‘How old is the roof?’ For instance, check this conversation and this one for two good examples.

At the same time, we’re giving agents an open forum to share their knowledge, and market themselves for free. Every contribution to Zillow links back to an agent’s profile page (with contact information, photos, active listings or links to their Web site), and agent answers are called out with an “agent” badge. The more an agent contributes, the more opportunity they have to impress one Zillow’s 4 million+ monthly users.

Additionally, Zillow launched EZ Ads; a self-service ad platform for agents, mortgage brokers, or other real estate professionals to easily and affordably buy ads targeted to specific ZIP code searches. Zillow is a media business, we make our money via advertising. EZ Ads demonstrates that.

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