If people bitched at you as much as we do to them, you'd run too!!!

Money... Money....Money. 

With any corporation, it had to be a financial one.

Joe Petrowsky They need money or AR wasn't the profit center they had thought it would bring. Their customer base is the every day consumer who they can brainwash into thinking they provide a valued service.

I believe it was out of their area of expertise and had no clue on what to do with it.  Most likely when Ben approached them they did the happy dance.

They did not see any increase in revenue .

PROFIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Probably too much of a drain on resources and a distraction.  Maybe it reduced their profit margin (which doesn't look so hot for a public company).

Maybe they got tired of owning a platform whose members are often less than appreciative of them.

It probably didn't fit their business model - they want to get leads and consumers and Active rain is like a news channel that provides programming without a fixed agenda... 

Money makes the world go round...and they needed it.  Barbara Todaro I don't think that was the reason...but it very funny.  A

Cash, after paying 3.5 billion to buy Trulia less then a year ago, I don't think they saw much profit from ActiveRain so why keep it. It does not help them except for a few monthly fee's. Much more money in getting agents to pay hundreads per zip code. 

Plus Zillow being post IPO, it is a lot harder to get large chunks of investor or venture capital money. 

Zillow is business, AR is ... we do not know what it is. Zillow also does not know what it is.

But why business like Zillow would need somthing as undefined as AR?

Frankly my dear, they didn't give a damn. My apologies to Rhett Butler for stealing his line.

AR has members dropping.  Zillow is a bane to our existence and a direct competitor.  No wonder no one wanted to join AR.  And, AR is a money pit.  It used to get great Google juice, ranking and SERPS.  Now . . . NOTHING!!  And with Zillow wanted to dominate every single home in the entire real estate universe, and be the first page Google for each and ever listing, they weren't about to do a thing to get OUR posts placed high.  I have better things to do then to write AR real estate posts that don't get ranked and make my phone ring.

I think too many were not blogging, leaving, and talking bad about Z & T.  

They decided the value of AR is near or at its peak, so it was time to liquidate and receive the best price for AR. 

It's plain to see that Zillow is more of an entertainment site than a Real Estate site. There's room enough for both just not together.

I don't think it really fit their portfolio of business lines really well. MIght be better for them to sell and reinvest that money into those aspects of their business that are more profitable to them.