Comments on: Zillow in your neighborhood

By: Darrin Clement

Darrin Clement — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 21:30:35 +0000

Hi guys,

I’d like to be 100% clear that there is no doubt about the ownership of the neighborhood map polygon data. Maponics and HomeGain decided to put out a joint press release to ensure there is no confusion: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/07/prweb539178.htm

By: glenn

glenn — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 19:17:24 +0000

ya, I was confused about that one too! Regarding neighborhoods… what about Fatdoor… for now these dudes are only in San Fran but they are doing the same thing… and then some! Then there’s the brewing battle over neighborhood maps that will likely take off in the future, thanks to an announcment from the developer of a cool neighborhood dataset (fractle.net) and the subsequent fallout from maponics who claims they actually bout the right to these data from another company – homegain… could be interesting. See details in my posts at http://gisuser.blogspot.com/2007/07/fractle-maps-and-neighborhood-dataset.html

and then http://gisuser.blogspot.com/2007/07/maponics-neighborhood-boundaries.html

sorry if I digressed a bit but this topic of neighborhood maps is quite interesting to me

By: J Wallis

J Wallis — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:12:20 +0000

oh thats fine and all, I just know that ‘Movers and Shakers’ is a registered trademark for one of the PRIZM groups. Community Tapestry is derived from Acxiom who more or less reverse engineered PRIZM and slapped their own names on the groups.

By: Petz

Petz — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:52:02 +0000

@Wallis:

I was just talking in general terms about this sort of classifications, wouldnt be surprised though if Richard developed a Mosaic classification for the US as well though.

By: J Wallis

J Wallis — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:49:34 +0000

Seems like for a US website they would use PRIZM from Claritas before a UK based Acorn.

By: Matt Priour

Matt Priour — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:20:52 +0000

I’m pretty sure those are the Acorn classifications. I have ESRI Community Sourcebook data for the last 5 years. They switched from Acorn to thier own Community Tapestry market segmentations in 2006. The classifications are more similar to the 2005 market segments in the Community Sourcebook.

By: James Fee

James Fee — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 13:55:23 +0000

Market research is obviously an area I know nothing about. Thanks for the info guys.

By: J Wallis

J Wallis — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 12:16:04 +0000

They have grabbed hold of Claritas demographic classifications. I believe it was Claritas who first came up with these cutsey names.

By: Petz

Petz — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 08:40:09 +0000

And yes, he does come up personnaly with those descriptions !

By: Petz

Petz — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 08:38:53 +0000

Or probably the US version of the Mosaic Geodemographic classification. Here in the UK Mosaic and its competition Acorn is used extensively in a wide range of applications.

Of course there is huge debate on the validity of bunging together individuals in such classes, but it does make many marketing and research activities possible.

You can have a look at Richard Webber, who started the both Acorn and Mosaic here in the UK.