With U.S. newspapers cutting staff and turning off the printing presses, Zillow.com is seeing new opportunities to help the battered industry. The Seattle online real estate startup is offering its technology to the Web sites of 180 newspapers, according to The New York Times.
“Newspapers have been left for dead by a lot of people,” Zillow Chief Operating Officer Spencer Rascoff tells the Times. “Readying their obituaries is very premature.”
Zillow.com first announced a partnership with 11 major newspaper companies in November 2007, including Hearst Newspapers, E.W. Scripps, Lee Enterprises and MediaNews Group. Zillow is looking at ways to increase advertising revenue and grow audience, which stood at 8.8 million unique visitors in March. (That compares to 7.5 million unique visitors in January.)
Among the newspapers establishing co-branded real estate sites with Zillow are The Tampa Tribune, with The Richmond Times-Dispatch and Winston-Salem Journal set to launch in the coming months, according to the press release.
Sounds a little bit like Stephen Colbert's line this evening about whether the Internet is killing newspapers. "To find out, I will check Google News," he said.
Zillow co-founder Rich Barton has always described his startup as a media company, one of the reasons why we put him on our list of 12 Seattle techies who could help save the Seattle P-I.
I have an email into Zillow to see if they are working with the Seattle P-I or The Seattle Times as part of its newspaper partnership.
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