My house is listed on Zillow.com under the Make Me Move category. The price we're listing isn't what the house cost us to build or what the county says it is worth, it's the amount someone would have to offer to us to get us to move out. We aren't planning on moving out, but there didn't seem to be any harm in fishing for a buyer anyway.
This is an interesting idea for a real estate site. I think that Zillow.com has a chance to become big only if they can get hundreds of listings in clusters that make it easy for buyers to browse and compare multiple houses. It doesn't look like this is going to happen any time soon for the Louisville area, however. Our house was the second local listing, and after a week, there are still only two listings for the area.
Well, maybe we'll luck out and someone looking for a house in Louisville will find Zillow and fall in love with our house. If that happens, we'll have to call up our builder Phil Fackler and let him know we need to build the same house again. ;-)
TenHunt.com is an interesting little online scavenger hunt site that gives away prizes to people who answer questions about ten Web sites. Its a sneaky way to get us, the simple-minded consumers, to go to some new sites and read about what they have to offer.
This somehow turns capitalism and advertising into a fun and addictive little game! I've been playing for a few weeks now. Each time a new hunt starts up, my wife and I grab our notebook computers and race to the finish. Tonight, however, the hunt didn't go very smoothly.
This somehow turns capitalism and advertising into a fun and addictive little game! I've been playing for a few weeks now. Each time a new hunt starts up, my wife and I grab our notebook computers and race to the finish. Tonight, however, the hunt didn't go very smoothly.
The first thing that looked odd was Question #1 of the hunt. Actually, the oddity was tha lack of a Question #1. The clock was ticking away up top, letting me know that the game was running, but somehow I needed to know the answer before I knew the question. I tried "42" over and over to no avail. Finally, I gave up and tried to use another Web browser. To my surprise, the countdown in the new browser window showed that the hunt was delayed another 15 minutes!
That was a big relief to me. I didn't mind that the site was having problems... just as long as it wasn't just me. :-) So I waited a few minutes, then went back to my first browser to re-log in. Voila! Another 15 minutes were added to the first 15 minute wait! Wha? I checked the chat room and found around seventy people cursing and complaining and anxious to win the iPod and Zune combo prize.
So I went back to waiting for the start. 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... It started this time! Well, sort of. It started for some people, but not for me. I noticed the leaderboard on the side of the page began to show that people had answered Question #1 and Question #2, but Question #1 hadn't shown up for me yet. I refreshed a few times and finally got it to show. I was six questions behind but I still felt like I had a chance... until I got to Question #4. It was a question about LastMinute-Auctions.com. Well, apparently, LastMinute-Auctions wasn't ready for 200 simultaneous visitors, 'cause it froze up like a tongue on a February flagpole.
Twenty minutes later, I was finally able to get to LastMinute-Auctions.com to continue the hunt. By that time, however, a handful of people had already finished the hunt, so there was no rush any longer. I continued on and finished in 127th place.
Long story short: this is a fun idea when it works, but it looks like the site is going through a few growing pains. I hope they can get this ironed out by next week. ;-)
If you would like to play, follow one of the links in this post to TenHunt and sign up! I'll get credit for the referral, and if you win, I'll win too! The way I've been playing, that may be my best chance at actually winning. :-)
