Crowdsourcing and Communities Breakout Session at iMeme

MODERATOR:
Jeffrey O'Brien, Fortune

PANELISTS
Richard Barton, CEO of Zillow
Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of Yelp
Max Levchin, CEO Slide
Jim Buckmaster, CEO Craigslist

BUCKMASTER - Craigslist
24 employees

LEVCHIN
Our slideshows are TVs--they can switch channels. The users can express themselves and put whatever content they want on them. The next step is allowing users t take whatever content they find interesting, including professionaly produced content and include that on their TVs. This allows the millions of pixel areas have the ability to carry advertising. Transactions can happen within the widget itself. The widget economy is real. People are realizing that these widgets are programmable mini-desktops. The real challenge is but how to make it relvent. The question is how do you find interesting content--especially those that can make money. Yes, we are generating revenue. I can't tell you how much yet. We are generating revenue through ads on our site. We are the 31st largest site on the internet. We passed Paypal--my personal victory over myself. Yesterday I turned 32 and Slide was the 32nd most popular site on the Internet. We are trying to figure out what people like. The long tail reality applied. The top 5% is interesting. 5 out of 7 playmates are using Slide products--those are popular--vs my personal birthday show. You need to analyze for longevity and relevance. The most interesting thing we've done, we are letting out users associate themselves in their little TV boxes with brands. Users can say, wow I really love Nike, I really want to incorporate the Nike swoosh on my slideshow. The user chooses this for themselves. No one in the equation gets offended. The next step that will happen is that you can incorporate bling within a transaction. The bling will be free. Users might get paid to display bling. Sparkle might get you to a movie preview.

OBRIEN
Zillow has raised $57 million in funding. You are also a partner at Benchmark capital. Tell us your vision for Zillow.

BARTON
The broad goal of Zillowis to light up the dark information to allow information to come into a bustling, vibrant bazaar--centered around homes, remodeling, and reconstruction and neighborhoods. If we can accomplish this, we think that a massive brand can be created online. With real estate online there isn't a brand that exists. Heretofore if you were good about doing research on a neighborhood you go knock on the doors of the neighbor. But that barrier is high. We are working to lower this barrier. My favorite feature on Zillow is the MakeMeMove. We have had 65,000 listings and 100 transactions from MakeMeMove. Negotiations on houses are hapenning whether or not a house is for sale. Before it was black or white--it's either for sale or not for sale. But we know there are thousand shares of gray. We are looking up into the dark supply side of the market and asking what would you really take for that. When we have 1,000,000 listings it gets interesting, when we have 2,000,000 it becomes a new marketplace. 17% is the delta between Zestimates and the MakeMeMove price. This increases liquidity and the velocity of t

OBRIEN
It's an acknowledgement that we all have our price. There is the tale of the honeymooning couple where the guy writes the note under the door of the house they want and the little old lady says oh yes I was going to move anyway.

The rest of the panel included great comments by Craiglist's CEO Buckmaster that Craiglist hasn't added Adwords because not many users have asked them to. Classic. Unfortunately my battery died so couldn't capture more of it. I dream of a day when laptop batteries can truly last for 9 hours and not lose power with each recharge.