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Angie's List Acquired for $500M by IAC

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

#81

Post by tedmiston »

I would like to hear someone explain why it's worth $500M.

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

> Angie's List is a US-based website containing crowd-sourced reviews of local businesses. For the quarter ending on June 30, 2016, Angie's List reported total revenue of US$83,000,000 and a net income of US$4,797,000.

> Angie's List had its first profitable year since founding in 1995 in 2015.

> In 2013, investors worried that the company had been in business for more than 18 years, yet never had shown an annual profit, and that valuations of the company were unrealistic based on the actual revenue the company produces. But by 2015 growth estimates indicate a significant earnings-per-share growth, with a long-term growth rate at 19%. Combine this with stock estimates rising in 2015 by 13.3%, some Securities research firms such as Zacks Investment Research indicated ANGI is well-positioned for future earnings growth.

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

#82

Post by jeremyt »

nodesocket wrote: post #46
birken wrote: post #38

As somebody that worked for a competitor and knows a lot about both of these companies, I can't say for certain what company is going to "win" local services but I can promise you both of these companies will lose (or I guess you could say Angie's List has now already lost). Angie's List went from a membership based review service and tried to unsuccessfully turn it into a marketplace which never worked. In the proce…

I have some of the same sentiment and concerns (my previous comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14242737 ), mainly around their lack of real technology, differentiated product, and questionable financials. Appreciate your insider knowledge (since you were the original CTO of Thumbtack).

Not to take any credit away from Birken, but he was the 2nd CTO.

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

#83

Post by raspasov »

iscrewyou wrote: post #67
timr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Isn't that like... Google? (more exposure part)

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

#84

Post by briandear »

exta wrote: post #62
throwawaylalala wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't work at TA, but I do own a tiny hotel in France so I deal with Booking.com and TA rather frequently -- TA does have a paid product for hotels, however other than not having my website URL and the ability for people to book directly with me on my TA profile, there has been absolutely zero difference in our visibility on TA. So far, TA has been really nice to work with despite me not paying them anything (yet.)

TA is definitely my go-to app when I go places; it is pretty good both as a consumer and as a listee.

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

#85

Post by briandear »

wingerlang wrote: post #68
ww520 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They do a huge amount of radio advertising -- so most visitors are likely coming from radio ads that explain what they do. People that visit AL already know why they're there.

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

#86

Post by bayonetz »

tedmiston wrote: post #75
erikpukinskis wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Anybody use here use Oink? How as it? Very interested in this level of granularity for restaurants. Nobody really doing this well.

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

#87

Post by citruspi »

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.

> 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.

However, just because a Mediterranean place cooks falafel to order and has tahini sauce doesn't mean that they cook the falafel well, that the service is decent, etc.

I'm also personally _more_ interested in the availability of falafel and tahini sauce than the number of stars a restaurant has, but I use the ranking/reviews to determine which place would be the most enjoyable to eat at. 70% of the Mediterranean restaurants near me may offer falafel, the question is which of them will not be a subpar experience. Unfortunately rankings/reviews definitely aren't always correct, hence this conversation, but I definitely think they still have a place.

Personally I weigh a high number of positive, detailed reviews with photos over the number of stars a restaurant has.

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

#88

Post by js2 »

briandear wrote: post #84
exta wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't work at TA, but I do own a tiny hotel in France so I deal with Booking.com and TA rather frequently -- TA does have a paid product for hotels, however other than not having my website URL and the ability for people to book directly with me on my TA profile, there has been absolutely zero difference in our visibility on TA. So far, TA has been really nice to work with despite me not paying them anything (yet.)…

I found TA invaluable for researching trips to Italy, Israel, and Costa Rica. You definitely have to use it carefully, and I verified with other sources, but there's a lot of good information there.

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

#89

Post by js2 »

albeebe1 wrote: post #70
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.

Interesting. I haven't even thought to look for reviews on Facebook. I have found nextdoor.com useful for finding service professionals.

For local restaurants, eh, I just visit them once. What I'm looking for in a restaurant seems to vary too much from what folks who leave reviews are looking for. e.g, some folks really care about how long it takes their meal to arrive or the quality of the service. To me, the quality and consistency of the meal is most important, so I'll forgive a slow kitchen or an occasional bad server or server having a bad day. Also, as they say, there's no accounting for some people's taste. :-)

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

#90

Post by js2 »

citruspi wrote: post #87
erikpukinskis wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. However, just because a Mediterranean place cooks falafel to order and has tahini sauce doesn't mean that they cook the falafel well, that the service is decent, etc. I'm also personally _more_ interested in the availabili…

If you're ever in Raleigh, NC, you'll find the best Mediterranean (specifically Lebanese) at Neomonde/Sitti/Sassool (they are all owned by the same family[1]). In my mind, Neomonde is a local treasure.

[1] http://www.neomonde.com/retail/about-us/

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