I got a bizarre email from Zillow last week:
Hello ,Since you claimed your home at , you might like to know you’re part of the DISC neighborhood on Zillow. This is a brand-new feature — literally, we just rolled it out — and we would like to ask your help in getting it started.
By taking part in your Neighborhood Page on Zillow, you can help make Zillow a useful resource for other people like you.
Visit your DEMO Neighborhood Page now!
See you in the neighborhood,
Of course the links didn’t work and my neighborhood “DISC” seemed like a broken email. Now it appears that this email was a mistake and the new Zillow Neighborhood Page is now active. The folks in my neighborhood that registered with Zillow and some bizarre 2000 census information for people to learn about my neighborhood are mashed together with some sort of map. Zillow has written some pretty words about my neighborhood (and probably every other one) to help real estate agents sell their properties. According to Zillow:
Who Lives Here
Movers and Shakers
Mobile suburban couples without kids. More than 50% of these younger married couples have moved in the past five years. They earn comfortable incomes and work in management or professional careers. Some have completed college.Country Clubbers
Wealthy married couples with children. These affluent families live a very comfortable life in the suburbs. More than 20% have a family income over $125,000. Most have earned a college or graduate school degree, and most own their homes.Suburban Climbers
Younger suburban singles. Aspiring singles climbing the corporate ladder and calling the suburbs home. Age ranges from mid-20s to mid-40s. Most rent their homes.
People in my neighborhood are also more likely to “Drive to work alone”. Damn, they got me pegged perfectly (except for the part that I am more likely to speak Hindi) Seriously though, what are they going to write in that “who lives here”? I’m pretty sure every category is spun up to make it seem like everyone is living in Beverly Hills.
OK all joking aside, I find this somewhat unnerving. It isn’t that I don’t mind knowing who my neighbors are, its just that I’d rather meet them on the sidewalk and not in some virtual chat room.
14 responses so far ↓
1
Lefty
// Jul 11, 2007 at 5:43 pm
In my neighborhood:
2
anon
// Jul 11, 2007 at 5:52 pm
You are right James, I looked at my neighborhood and its pretty much the same thing. Nothing negative (and believe me, you’d write negative if you lived where I do).
3
matt
// Jul 11, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Lefty, I moved out of your neighborhood a couple of years ago!
4
vector
// Jul 11, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Sniff….
Smells suspiciously like ESRI’s Community Tapestry Demographic dataset.
5
Petz
// Jul 12, 2007 at 1:38 am
Or probably the US version of the Mosaic Geodemographic classification. Here in the UK Mosaic and its competition Acorn is used extensively in a wide range of applications.
Of course there is huge debate on the validity of bunging together individuals in such classes, but it does make many marketing and research activities possible.
You can have a look at Richard Webber, who started the both Acorn and Mosaic here in the UK.
6
Petz
// Jul 12, 2007 at 1:40 am
And yes, he does come up personnaly with those descriptions !
7
J Wallis
// Jul 12, 2007 at 5:16 am
They have grabbed hold of Claritas demographic classifications. I believe it was Claritas who first came up with these cutsey names.
8
James Fee
// Jul 12, 2007 at 6:55 am
Market research is obviously an area I know nothing about. Thanks for the info guys.
9
Matt Priour
// Jul 12, 2007 at 8:20 am
I’m pretty sure those are the Acorn classifications. I have ESRI Community Sourcebook data for the last 5 years. They switched from Acorn to thier own Community Tapestry market segmentations in 2006. The classifications are more similar to the 2005 market segments in the Community Sourcebook.
10
J Wallis
// Jul 12, 2007 at 8:49 am
Seems like for a US website they would use PRIZM from Claritas before a UK based Acorn.
11
Petz
// Jul 12, 2007 at 8:52 am
@Wallis:
I was just talking in general terms about this sort of classifications, wouldnt be surprised though if Richard developed a Mosaic classification for the US as well though.
12
J Wallis
// Jul 12, 2007 at 9:12 am
oh thats fine and all, I just know that ‘Movers and Shakers’ is a registered trademark for one of the PRIZM groups. Community Tapestry is derived from Acxiom who more or less reverse engineered PRIZM and slapped their own names on the groups.
13
glenn
// Jul 12, 2007 at 12:17 pm
ya, I was confused about that one too! Regarding neighborhoods… what about Fatdoor… for now these dudes are only in San Fran but they are doing the same thing… and then some! Then there’s the brewing battle over neighborhood maps that will likely take off in the future, thanks to an announcment from the developer of a cool neighborhood dataset (fractle.net) and the subsequent fallout from maponics who claims they actually bout the right to these data from another company - homegain… could be interesting. See details in my posts at http://gisuser.blogspot.com/2007/07/fractle-maps-and-neighborhood-dataset.html
and then http://gisuser.blogspot.com/2007/07/maponics-neighborhood-boundaries.html
sorry if I digressed a bit but this topic of neighborhood maps is quite interesting to me
14
Darrin Clement
// Jul 13, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Hi guys,
I’d like to be 100% clear that there is no doubt about the ownership of the neighborhood map polygon data. Maponics and HomeGain decided to put out a joint press release to ensure there is no confusion: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/07/prweb539178.htm
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