Angie's List Acquired for $500M by IAC • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by tedmiston » Tue, May 02, 2017, 4:07 AM UTC

narrator wrote: post #9

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 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.

TripAdvisor recommendations get dated fast and are only for a niche audience. In my experience they tend to stick to the most popular places rather than the best places, and they miss a lot of local spots / dive-y spots / places that families wouldn't go etc.

In cities like SF, NYC, etc, I've had much better luck with recommendations from Foursquare and Yelp. Especially with new places.

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

#72

Post by tedmiston » Tue, May 02, 2017, 4:09 AM UTC

rexf wrote: post #47

covercash wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Foursquare is my secret weapon whenever I need to impress with restaurant selection.

I use 4sq & Swarm a bunch. 4sq's venue ratings is hit or miss. I've definitely found some good places to eat at (that I would've otherwise not found), but I've also eaten at a ton of places that are highly rated but nothing special. For the latter, perhaps they are good relative to the immediate area, but not really that good.

Big fan of their SMS bot Marsbot as well if you haven't tried it yet. For some reason it's very low key and they don't promote it at all, but it's a pretty sweet product.

https://marsbotapp.com/

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

#73

Post by tedmiston » Tue, May 02, 2017, 4:12 AM UTC

narrator wrote: post #9

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 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.

> TripAdvisor makes most of its money off of hotel booking referrals

Somewhat surprisingly this is the case for a lot of travel POI type sites (hotel referral commission rates are so high). Even a site like Kayak gets a significant portion of its revenue from hotel bookings.

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

#74

Post by eco » Tue, May 02, 2017, 4:13 AM UTC

tnorthcutt wrote: post #24

I attempted to use Angie's List once as a paying customer; I found that it was outright deceptive: https://mobile.twitter.com/tnorthcutt/status/567747019726409...

Five years ago I signed up for Angie's List because I liked the concept of a paid membership to keep the reviews legitimate and of high quality (I figured the type of person that would pay for a membership would leave better reviews). Angie's List itself would highlight this in their advertisements at the time.

After using the site for a bit I realized that they were giving preferential sorting to "coupon baring providers" (and to have coupons your business has to pay Angie's List). They were taking from both ends and compromising the one thing they were supposed to be better than their competitors at. I specifically stated this was why I was cancelling and actually got back a seemingly personalized email saying "I have passed along your feedback regarding this issue. While I cannot promise that our policy will change, I will personally see to it that your idea is discussed with other Angie's List personnel and that it will be seriously considered."

Fast forward four years and I get a notification of a class action settlement in my email because of this very issue (and some other shady stuff they were apparently doing). I guess the Angie's List personnel didn't consider what I wrote seriously enough...

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

#75

Post by tedmiston » Tue, May 02, 2017, 4:22 AM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #58

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…

This will always be true for any subjective rating system, i.e. stars, upvotes, etc. The solution is classification instead of ranking. I am more interested in a Mediterranean place that cooks falafel to order and has tahini sauce than I am in a 4-star Mediterranean restaurant. Conveniently those are all verifiable facts, so there's no need to wrestle with subjectivity.

I'm definitely with you on having better categorization and classification and filtering options.

Kevin Rose did a short-lived app called Oink [1] a few years ago with the idea of ranking individual dishes at each restaurant. I really thought (and still think) there's a huge potential for this concept.

Every day I have some query like "show me all of the places that serve falafel within 15 minutes of me" or "what are all of the shops with sandwiches in my neighborhood?" Running those kinds of queries on the traditional POI sites like Yelp or Google Maps is pretty ineffective.

[1]: http://mashable.com/2012/03/14/kevin-roses-oink-folds/

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

#76

Post by tedmiston » Tue, May 02, 2017, 5:06 AM UTC

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #50

superasn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this was really good and very motivational. It's amazing to hear success stories like "so I started selling this door to door". I think it can be a great brain food to start the day. Any other resources you would recommend like this?

> Any other resources you would recommend like this? So I personally listen to the following which is all in a similar vain: - Start-up from Gimlet Media (first season outlined their start, subsequent seasons have been a mixture of other companies) - TWiST (This Week in Start-ups) by Jason Calacanis. I know people have various opinions on him here but I find his interviews great - The Pitch which is a podcast where p…

Second for The Pitch. I've only listened to a few episodes so far but really enjoyed the raw level of numbers and transparency they give.

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

#77

Post by mtempm » Tue, May 02, 2017, 5:09 AM UTC

pcurve wrote: post #28

tnorthcutt wrote: post #24

I attempted to use Angie's List once as a paying customer; I found that it was outright deceptive: https://mobile.twitter.com/tnorthcutt/status/567747019726409...

I hired 3 service providers through Angie's List. I went with top 1-3. One was amazing and professional, though quite expensive. He more than earned his paycheck by fixing installation errors left behind by two providers before. The other 2, were just average in workmanship, which surprised me based on their high ratings. You can clearly tell were making up through volume. If you are the type of person who doesn't mi…

What service was this?

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

#78

Post by jrnichols » Tue, May 02, 2017, 5:11 AM UTC

covercash wrote: post #19

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.

Foursquare is my secret weapon whenever I need to impress with restaurant selection.

Foursquare was my favorite app ever, until they split it up into 4sq and swarm. then it became totally useless to me, and all of my friends slowly stopped using it. :/

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

#79

Post by tedmiston » Tue, May 02, 2017, 5:12 AM UTC

runevault wrote: post #56

Surprised Angie's list was able to get this much, every impression I had was they were doing poorly, especially after the layoffs a while back. Would be interesting to have been a fly on the wall during the negotiations.

I've been following the stock for a few years and occasionally shorting it. $ANGI has definitely been a strange one to watch.

https://finance.yahoo.com/chart/ANGI#eyJtdWx0aUNvbG9yTGluZSI...

End of day market cap $352M with a 41% surge after hours.

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

#80

Post by tedmiston » Tue, May 02, 2017, 5:20 AM UTC

eco wrote: post #74

tnorthcutt wrote: post #24

I attempted to use Angie's List once as a paying customer; I found that it was outright deceptive: https://mobile.twitter.com/tnorthcutt/status/567747019726409...

Five years ago I signed up for Angie's List because I liked the concept of a paid membership to keep the reviews legitimate and of high quality (I figured the type of person that would pay for a membership would leave better reviews). Angie's List itself would highlight this in their advertisements at the time. After using the site for a bit I realized that they were giving preferential sorting to "coupon baring prov…

From Wikipedia:

> In August 2016, Angie’s List has agreed to settle three lawsuits for a payment of $1,400,000. The class action lawsuits focused on Angie’s List’s acceptance of advertising payments from service providers, and whether those payments affect service providers’ letter-grade ratings, reviews, and place in search-result rankings. Angie’s List denies plaintiffs’ claims, but disclosed that revenue from service providers can affect the order of search-result rankings of the service provider under certain settings. Moore vs. AngiesList.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angie%27s_List