Is Zillow reading this blog?

Perhaps Rich Barton is reading this blog. Back in April, I commented on why I thought the odds were against Zillow. The lack of knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of the real estate market was a key issue that I thought would impair them -- it looks like they are starting to plug that gap. Yesterday, they announced additions to their board that included familiar names -- Erik Blachford (ex-CEO of Expedia) and Greg Maffei (ex-CFO of Microsoft and current CFO/President of Oracle) and one name less familiar (Gordon Stephenson). Gordon is the co-founder of a real estate brokerage. Coincidentally, I was one of Gordon's first clients when he got into Real Estate right out of Stanford in the late 80's. We were both in our early 20's looking to build real estate empires coming at it from different angles. I later got distracted/consumed by Microsoft and scaled back my real estate investing but he's been in it ever since.