Zoopla: The Ocotopus Did It
In January of 2008, a new property website called Zoopla! started up. With property prices going ever skyward, it wasn’t exactly a surprising launch, but Zoopla! itself was surprising. Like all very good ideas on the web, it was simple and well executed, yet allowed for good, often complex, effects to happen: list every house in the UK and allow their owners to “claim” them, declare their intention to sell, and tune the price with extra data against a global price estimate, itself refined by network effects. Estate agents were (at least in theory) nowhere to be seen. The CEO even gave me a bottle of wine.
I’ve re-visited Zoopla! a few times since then, but today I see they’ve changed. They have, to put it simply, sold out to the estate agents. Gone are the comprehensive listings, the house price algorithm presumably now a figment of the agents’ traditional hype. I learnt in the new year that they’d found a large investor – the ominously named Octopus Ventures. From the press release:
‘Alex Macpherson, Chief Executive, Octopus Ventures, said: “Zoopla.co.uk has the potential to become the UK’s most valuable property asset. It is an extremely compelling proposition…”‘
He was right, but what he did with his £2 million doesn’t make Zoopla compelling in any way at all. They’re just like any other estate agency site now. What a pity – and what a waste of a good idea.
RIP Zoopla – you’re going nowhere now.
Incidentally, Octopus Ventures pop their T&Cs at you when you deep link to them. Never, ever, trust a company that does that. It’s a sign that they don’t want to understand anything other than short term profits and asset sweating. Hard to imagine a more disastrous investor really.
How did Zoopla attract properties to market in the first place prior to their Initial launch?
If you were selling your house, you could do so without an estate agent’s commission. Just list it for sale and buyers would buy it.