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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

#101

Post by tmaly »

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…

I have never heard of it, but I am still going to pursue this space.

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

#102

Post by tmaly »

bayonetz wrote: post #86
tedmiston wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am trying, its just a side project at this point.

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

#103

Post by tmaly »

superasn wrote: post #31
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "How I Built This" is an incredibly well done podcast. I know this is a little off topic but it's likely a podcast many at HN would find interesting as it's about how entrepreneurs built their businesses. I highly recommend!

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?

the indiehackers.com podcast is really great, one of my favorites right now. The startup chat with Steli and Hiten is another good one.

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

#104

Post by pnutjam »

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.

That's ok, they don't either.

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

#105

Post by diyseguy »

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…

Have to agree with this assessment, just recently tried both of those services in the hunt for a plumber. Everyone I called from HomeAdvisor didn't return my calls or else called to tell me they weren't actually plumbers. Angie's List was a laughable disappointment with only one search result for my entire zip code and a testament to how the pay-walled garden approach just doesn't work.

I finally resorted to asking around in my neighborhood and found a good plumber who was not listed on Google maps or any other online source. Reasoning was obvious: one bad review and your business is shot down forever, the best thing to do is to stay off the radar.

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

#106

Post by Applejinx »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #94
Endy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually going to disagree on the ServiceMagic comment that the contractor doesn't care. I worked for a local contractor for several years, and we had to care, if anything, more, about those orders. Those jobs were the ones most likely to file with the BBB if something went wrong. Plus, enough bad reviews and they actually used to hide low-ranked companies.

BBB is also going the way of the yellow pages.

Which is good: maybe there was a time when they were legitimate, but in the current day it appears they are not. In fact I would consider a 'we bought a AAA rating from Better Business Bureau, look!' as a huge red flag.

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

#107

Post by noxToken »

diyseguy wrote: post #105
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…

Have to agree with this assessment, just recently tried both of those services in the hunt for a plumber. Everyone I called from HomeAdvisor didn't return my calls or else called to tell me they weren't actually plumbers. Angie's List was a laughable disappointment with only one search result for my entire zip code and a testament to how the pay-walled garden approach just doesn't work. I finally resorted to asking a…

I have found that this is one of the most redeeming qualities of Next Door. Among the people selling "gently used" crap that no one would even take for free, the NIMBY crowd, the easy racism under the guise of neighborhood watch, the MLM moms, and the "THINK OF THE CHILDEN" crowd, Next Door has been spot on for recommendations.

There are small business owners who make posts every two weeks are so about their super amazing lawn care business providing 10x the quality of TruGreen, but if you ask for recommendations, people flock in droves on both sides. Users give glowing praises for good experiences, and they will absolutely crucify a business for bad experiences. Sometimes you have to tease out details, but it's way better than a context-free review post to Google or Yelp.

It's very common for a review on a website to have a business with a 4 star rating and a couple negative reviews. The negative reviews will only say something like, "Terrible experience. I will never user ${business} again!" Thanks buddy! You've given me 0 reasons to avoid this place. Next Door allows you to engage other locals on why the experience was poor.

I just hope that Next Door doesn't try to pivot and capitalize on this. The system in place is perfect for recommendations, and I would hate for them to create some weird Yelp-esque review system within the app.

Edit: This isn't confined to Next Door. Any forum where you can engage neighbors or locals with conversation will be better than a review site. People rarely go into enough details on why an experience was positive or negative. An HVAC company can refill refrigerant for a low price, but their duct work can be extremely pricey and sub-par. Reviews probably will not capture that type of information without asking what the user had done, how much it cost, promptness, time to complete the work, etc. Added these interview-style questions on a review site probably won't help, because will likely not submit a review where all of these are required fields.

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

#108

Post by zippergz »

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…

Angie's List used to be awesome. When we bought our current house, we needed an array of professionals for various services, and we hired all of them via Angie's List reviews. Every single one was great. We have found that having a large number of relevant positive reviews on Angie's List to be an extremely strong indicator that the pro will do good work.

However, over the past few years, it really seems like it has stagnated, and it's clear they've changed their focus. It's harder to find people who have many recent reviews, and they're always trying to push "coupons" in your face.

These days more often than not, I get recommendations from our neighborhood Facebook group (sometime Nextdoor as well, but Facebook is much more active here). The track record isn't quite as good as Angie's List was in the glory days, but it's a lot better than Yelp or just randomly searching.

Hiring service pros is so stressful, and such a minefield. So many of them are flakes or terrible at what they do. It seems like it should be a no brainer to have a service that reliably connects you with people who will do awesome work on your home. But I guess it's too hard to monetize that...

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

#109

Post by cschmidt »

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...

Ranking on TripAdvisor is based only on review data, with more recent reviews carrying more weight as you'd expect. I work on this personally. Money has no influence whatsoever.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/TripAdvisorInsights/n684/tripadv...

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

#110

Post by magic_beans »

gscott wrote: post #25
Digory wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed it was increasingly easy to get memberships; I saw several groups promoting free AL memberships as a side benefit last year. Now it's free to join, apparently. Not sure if these numbers capture that shift, but loss of subscriber revenue was, apparently, a plus not a minus. It was more useful when it was limited to paying members. I'm sure IAC sees easy profit in shifting to a "if you're not the customer, yo…

I joined because it was free now it's now been a year and they're trying to bill me for a new year. They never said it was free for only one year or they buried it in the tos. I have unsubscribed from the service I find Yelp much more useful.

The good thing about Yelp is that if you actually read through 1- and 2- star reviews for otherwise highly rated restaurants or services, you realize pretty quickly that it is the reviewer with some sort of problem, and not the service.
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