• Posted in Culture

    Not Designing Like It’s 1999

    Nine months ago, when I first interviewed at Zillow for a position on the design team, I was asked how to design a site so that it is lightweight and loved by search engines.  I remember getting on my miniature-sized, but sturdy, rock star pink soap box ...

  • Posted in Culture

    Having Trouble Using Zillow.com?

    Zillow’s search and maps functionality is based on some of the latest and greatest web technologies (AJAX, Flash, XSL transformations, and more).  While we work hard to make everything work perfectly for every user, we know that some of you are ...

  • Posted in Culture

    Fantasy House Shopping on Zillow

    There are lots of cool things you can do on Zillow.com. Of course if you’re in the market for a house, using Zillow as a research tool to help determine what you should pay is a no-brainer. Likewise, if you’re selling your house, you should ...

  • Posted in Culture

    Cramping Everyone’s Style

    When you commit to working at a startup, you sign up for long hours, often lower pay and the possibility of being shoehorned into cramped working conditions. At Zillow, we currently have 75 folks working in a space suited for 45. Let’s put it this way ...

  • Posted in Culture

    We Blog… We Read…And We Do Listen

    This morning I went to a panel discussion here in Seattle about corporate blogging and how businesses can use blogs as a conduit for two-way conversations with their customers.  Among the panelists were Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, co-authors of Naked ...

  • Posted in Culture

    Tasty Info Behind That Swirly Text

    There is a hurdle, of sorts, that we throw up in front of some information on home details pages and it’s worth making the leap since it contains a vault of information. When you see the swirly numbers in a little box and we ask you to re-type what ...

  • Posted in Culture

    Catching some Zzzzzzs

    If anyone’s wondering what life’s been like around here during launch week, here’s one small anecdote that says it all… When I went into our storage closet yesterday to grab some supplies, I flipped on the light switch and almost jumped out of ...

  • Posted in Culture

    What Zillow users are saying to us

    It’s Day 2 and already there’s been a lot of chatter on blogs about what we’re doing and how Zestimates stack up to people’s expectations. We’ve received lots of feedback, too. On the first day we received over a thousand ...

  • Posted in Culture

    Safari Support

    We’ve had a number of our users ask why we are not currently supporting the Safari browser on OS X. Basically we are using some JavaScript features that Safari doesn’t currently support. As an Apple user I thought those of you using Safari would find ...