Well, I'm sure nothing would make them happier, but currently I believe that are only operating in a handful of counties in Colorado and Florida.  It will be interesting to see how successful they are at expanding into other states where public records are more difficult to come by.  Florida has a very progressive approach to allowing access to public records on-line - many states are not as technologically advanced and may be more of a problem than Zenodata anticipates. Although they only expect to offer services in the top 500 counties in the country, it will be difficult and expensive to accomplish.

I expect Zenodata will also encounter other problems as they grow.  Mainly, how do you keep all of this information current enough to be useful?  Will their customers be willing to pay them for data that is 3 months or more behind?

They claim on their website that they are a privately financed company with operations in Colorado, Barbados, and China.  They have raised over $26 million in financing and with their limited operations, I have to believe they are hemorrhaging red ink... how long will these investors continue to finance a negative cash flow? 

The company has plans to tap other revenue streams, such as data mining.  The company will have all of our public information and can sell lists to marketers.  For instance, the example they give on their web site, http://www.zenodata.com/news_detail.asp?nID=57&ntype=zdn, is to provide a list of homeowners with homes worth more than $X with no mortgages.  That could be a lucrative market for the company, but will it be enough to get them out of a deep hole?

Though they claim to have little, or no, competition - there are other services that are being developed by Realty Data Corp, for instance, that will certainly be targeting the same customer base.  Losing one big client in this niche market would more than likely be devastating to their bottom line.

I guess only time will tell, but one thing is certain: with all of that information gathered, even if Zenodata can't make it profitable, someone will buy the data and consolidate it with other databases to keep the concept alive.  On-line data is something that abstractors will have to contend with in the long run no matter who owns it.

Robert A. Franco
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