Zillow Answers Shareholders' Questions Via Social Media
Zillow made social media history Tuesday, becoming the first company to solicit questions on Twitter and Facebook during its earnings call.
The tweets poured in, right? Not exactly.
As of 5:15 p.m., only seven earnings-related questions had been tweeted using the #ZEarnings hashtag. By the end of the call, approximately nine Twitter users submitted earnings-related questions.
Zillow, an online marketplace for real-estate information, announced plans to use social media on the call two weeks ago. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo retweeted the news to his 1.06 million followers April 24. Ahead of the earnings release, @TwitterAds tweeted about Zillow's "cool use of Twitter for biz/finance."
During the Q&A on the conference call, Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff answered a number of questions from Twitter. Here are a couple:
--@CG_Internet: In mortgage, with 4.5M loan requests and $4.9M in revenue, can you comment on lender quote density and CPCpricing? #ZEarnings
--@bbolan1: #Zearnings The underwater mortgage quotes, are they priced higher or lower than "regular" mortgage quotes ?@zillow
On Facebook, a few Zillow fans posted about the site but only one question related to quarterly earnings.
While overall social media participation in the call was a bit underwhelming, Zillow delivered on its promise. The company solicited questions on social media and the CEO answered during the call. Perhaps the investing community just needs some time to warm up to the idea?
Leigh Drogen (@LDrogen), Founder of Estimize and former StockTwits employee, tweeted a suggestion to Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff: "you guys should really be doing your Q&A for #zearnings on @StockTwits, better distribution to investors/traders."
Zillow's decision to use social came on the heels of the SEC's April 2 report, which made it clear that companies can use social media outlets for key announcements as long as they alert investors about which outlets will be used to disseminate information.