Zillow Uses Analytics, Machine Learning To Disrupt With Data - InformationWeek

Residential real estate site Zillow stormed onto the market in the 2000s, letting consumers check on the property value of their own homes and those of all their friends, family members, and acquaintances, too, much to the dismay of real estate professionals. Founded by a couple of former Microsoft executives who went on to start travel site Expedia and then Zillow, this site threatened to disrupt the real estate market when it debuted in 2006. It gave people access to information that had previously only been available through real estate pros. Ten years later Zillow has proven it has staying power. Built on the idea of ingesting, processing, and serving data from multiple sources to consumers, the company has made a name for its "Zestimate" -- its secret data-driven formula for predicting the value of a piece of real estate.