I’ve been pretty slammed over the last week and this week looks pretty busy as well. So, I only have time for a couple quick thoughts.

Thought #1

Dang, Zillow.com (previously discussed here) sure shot to the top. Have you seen their numbers? I’m impressed. Looks like they came through that inital rough patch with barely a scratch. I hear about them everywhere it seems. Newspaper, local news, co-workers, in-laws. I’ll have more to say about the response to Zillow.com in the real estate community in a future post.

Thought #2

Ma.gnolia.com came out of beta the other day. Another social bookmarking tool with a funny domain name. C’mon people, if you want to break out of the techie/early adopter crowd, stop with these funky punctuated domain names. I’m always surprised how programmed most people are to type “www.whatever.com” (they always seem to start with the www, even if you don’t say it) and it is hard to get them out of this groove. So, make it easy on them. How difficult is it going to be for me to tell somebody, “check out magnolia,” and they go to magnolia.com, which is apparently part of Exxon/Mobil. Must be an another oil conspiracy. At least del.icio.us bought the real thing. (somebody else discussed this recently, but I can’t remember who/where)

The reviews are mixed, though I am seeing enough positive response to give it a shot myself. Zeldman’s team did the design, so it’ll be worth it just to check out their work. But, can you believe it took six people to do the UI? Crazy. I thought that was a joke the first time I read it. I’m all for great design, usability and clean markup, but that seems like a bit much. I hope Gnolia got a good deal.