Zillow and Other Companies Moving From Consumers to Businesses

In the last 18 months, though, Zillow has lavished its attention on a different audience: real estate agents. It has created one service that lets them build their own Web sites, one for broadcasting their property listings and another for managing communications with home seekers.

There used to be a clearer line between Internet companies that catered to consumers and those that served businesses. The market was neatly divided between the unglamorous business-to-business or B2B companies, operating mostly out of public view, and the flashier business-to-consumer or B2C companies. But with Zillow and a wave of similar firms, that distinction is fading.

LinkedIn, Groupon and GrubHub — consumer services that help people advertise their talents, find daily deals and order takeout food — are among the companies seeking to burrow more deeply into the operations of businesses in their respective markets. Some companies, like Zillow, are shifting toward business clients well after they were begun. For others, it has been part of the plan from the beginning.

Of course, most consumer Internet companies have long had relationships of some kind with other businesses. Amazon.com works with thousands of manufacturers and with sellers who use its site as a storefront. EBay, initially known as a marketplace for individuals to peddle collectibles and other goods, now has plenty of businesses that sell on its site. Then there are the businesses to which Facebook, Google and Yahoo sell advertising.

But consumer Internet companies of the newer generation are doing even more. In many cases, the tools they are providing businesses resemble specialized versions of so-called customer relationship management services from companies like Salesforce.com, which help businesses increase sales and keep track of communications with clients.

By moving in this direction, consumer Internet companies hope to tap potentially rich new sources of revenue, which could make them more attractive to investors. A company that gets business clients to depend on a broad set of its services can make it tougher for competitors to swipe its customers.

“You can’t just sell advertising without being exposed to someone else undercutting you on price,” said Spencer Rascoff, chief executive of Zillow. “If you sell ads plus services, you’re in a more defensible position.”

Bill Gurley, a Zillow board member and venture capitalist, has seen enough hybrid Internet companies that serve both businesses and consumers that he coined a term to describe them: B2B2C. “We’re moving from a day and age where you’re just a Web site to one where we’re automating the connections between businesses and consumers,” he said.

Mr. Gurley’s firm, Benchmark Capital, has invested in several other companies he puts in that camp, including Uber, which offers a mobile app that lets consumers hail a town car and gives drivers a “heat map” highlighting the areas where they are most likely to find customers.

GrubHub, another one of his investments, lets consumers order takeout and delivery food from more than 15,000 restaurants online and through mobile apps. In many cases, the service uses a clunky system in which customer orders are sent to restaurants by fax and confirmed by phone.

Recently, though, GrubHub introduced a product called OrderHub that could allow it to become more entwined in restaurants’ operations. OrderHub is a tablet computer running Google’s Android operating system that lets restaurants receive orders electronically, confirm them with a couple of taps and improve the accuracy of delivery time estimates.

GrubHub is giving free tablets to restaurants, which pay a commission for orders received through the system. About 500 restaurants in Chicago and 500 in New York have the devices now, according to the company.

LinkedIn, meanwhile, is finding success in helping human resources departments manage recruiting. The site started as a place where people could advertise themselves professionally and build a network of contacts. Soon corporate recruiters began using LinkedIn to look for new hires.