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Angie's List Acquired for $500M by IAC

bloomberg.com

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Re: Angie's List Acquired for $500M by IAC

#61

Post by timr »

nunez wrote: post #53
narrator wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is why TripAdvisor is better, in my experience, for restaurants than Yelp. If I'm not mistaken, TripAdvisor makes most of its money off of hotel booking referrals.

ANYTHING is better than Yelp. It literally does everything in the book to get you to download the app (to collect your user data, presumably) and is literally designed from the ground up to promote businesses that pay them to be higher on the index. Their sales tactics are borderline abusive, too. They will hunt you down forever until you sign a package with them, and they give you zero time to think about whether th…

"and is literally designed from the ground up to promote businesses that pay them to be higher on the index."

This is false. Source: I worked there, on search. You cannot pay to rank higher in search.

Re: Angie's List Acquired for $500M by IAC

#62

Post by exta »

throwawaylalala wrote: post #21
narrator wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is why TripAdvisor is better, in my experience, for restaurants than Yelp. If I'm not mistaken, TripAdvisor makes most of its money off of hotel booking referrals.

I'm pretty sure TA does the same...

It does not! At least it did not 8 years ago when I worked there. Obviously a lot can change, but they realized the one competitive advantage they had that kept others out of the market was the huge catalog of user reviews.

While other things may be fudged for profitability, there was a clear line between content and advertising we didn't cross.

There are quite a few TA people on HN. Maybe one will chime in?

Re: Angie's List Acquired for $500M by IAC

#63

Post by robotresearcher »

yjgyhj wrote: post #26

Having not heard of Angie's List before I decided to check their website out. If anyone working on that is reading HN, you might find it interesting that I didn't understand at all what the website was for until reading all the way down to the testimonials. Until then it was all about how happy users are and how many solutions it provides. Might be a good idea to put a one-liner explanation somewhere very visible.

> Might be a good idea to put a one-liner explanation somewhere very visible.

Apparently the customer was happy to pay 0.5B without that advice. AL sold a company, not a product, and they closed the deal.

Re: Angie's List Acquired for $500M by IAC

#64

Post by ceocoder »

jacquesm wrote: post #35
timdorr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swipe right to invest.

Funderr ;) Not the worst idea I've seen.

funderr.com is already taken, but funder.io is available. I call dibs - that should be a thing btw, e.g. your honor, yes he actually built the app and ran the product BUT I called dibs, on Twitter and on HN, look at the timestamp.

Re: Angie's List Acquired for $500M by IAC

#66

Post by aphextron »

nunez wrote: post #52

unusual purchase by iac. they've always focussed on dating apps.

>unusual purchase by iac. they've always focused on dating apps.

Not unusual at all. It's all about the business model: online subscription based revenue. When I worked for $major_dating_site, we were directly compared to Angie's List by investors.

Re: Angie's List Acquired for $500M by IAC

#67

Post by iscrewyou »

timr wrote: post #61
nunez wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ANYTHING is better than Yelp. It literally does everything in the book to get you to download the app (to collect your user data, presumably) and is literally designed from the ground up to promote businesses that pay them to be higher on the index. Their sales tactics are borderline abusive, too. They will hunt you down forever until you sign a package with them, and they give you zero time to think about whether th…

"and is literally designed from the ground up to promote businesses that pay them to be higher on the index." This is false. Source: I worked there, on search. You cannot pay to rank higher in search.

Would I be in the wrong to call this a "canary"? As in you cannot pay to rank higher in search. But you can pay to have more exposure, better reviews, hidden bad reviews, etc.

Re: Angie's List Acquired for $500M by IAC

#68

Post by wingerlang »

ww520 wrote: post #34
yjgyhj wrote: post #26

Having not heard of Angie's List before I decided to check their website out. If anyone working on that is reading HN, you might find it interesting that I didn't understand at all what the website was for until reading all the way down to the testimonials. Until then it was all about how happy users are and how many solutions it provides. Might be a good idea to put a one-liner explanation somewhere very visible.

It's a sales funneling technique. By the time the user has reached the bottom, he has been prepped with all the glowing testimonials and ready to sign up. For a casual visitor, as blunt as it is, you are not their target audience.

Who is the target audience? I also have no idea what it is from the website.

Re: Angie's List Acquired for $500M by IAC

#69

Post by wingerlang »

ceocoder wrote: post #64
jacquesm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funderr ;) Not the worst idea I've seen.

funderr.com is already taken, but funder.io is available. I call dibs - that should be a thing btw, e.g. your honor, yes he actually built the app and ran the product BUT I called dibs, on Twitter and on HN, look at the timestamp.

DAAS, dibs as a service. Based on blockchain technology. Named something like funderr, fundr, fundrio, fundrly. HN front page here we come.

Re: Angie's List Acquired for $500M by IAC

#70

Post by albeebe1 »

dhd415 wrote: post #2

Not specifically apropos of the buyout, but my experience with Angie's List has been similar to that of Yelp, that is, businesses that paid to advertise on AL were better able to maintain high rankings. The top-rated companies were not the best from either a quality or price perspective. While it's a great idea to crowd-source referrals for contractors like that, it's unfortunate that that model falls prey to the sam…

I've found my towns local facebook group to be the go to place for recommendations.
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