Thumbtack Is Coming For Yelp And Angie’s List As the Smartest Way To Hire Skilled Pros. Finding someone to paint your deck or DJ your wedding shouldn't be that hard, but even with the rise of review services like Yelp and Angie's List, it is.
In the best-case scenario of a personal recommendation from a friend, you still have to make a call, wait for a reply, and hope they're available and meet your budget--and if they're not, call a dozen others anyway. San Francisco-based startup Thumbtack is working to strip away those annoying steps, and has just raised a $30 million round from Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global Management to grow their business, which is already in 38 states and the District of Columbia. Unlike review sites that primarily display information, Thumbtack makes introductions between customers and professionals based on the specific needs of a project.
Professionals who confirm they are interested and available make bids for customers to choose from. » ‘Change is hard’: Consumer Reports restructures to survive in the digital era JIMROMENESKO. Consumer Reports is struggling to change as it faces new competition.
Can it reverse this downward trend? A memo to Consumer Reports top managers in February of 2012 was blunt: “CR is not growing revenues or subscribers, and we are losing money. We must right the ship.” The ship began veering off course in 2011 after many blockbuster years. Consumer Reports and Consumers Union, the policy and action division of the magazine, showed a hefty profit of $21,414,103 for the fiscal year ending May 31, 2008. The bad news came in June of 2011, when Consumer Reports reported a fiscal year loss of $3,502,757. “He was there to shake things up,” says an employee who, like most people interviewed for this story, requested anonymity. Jim Guest, chief executive since 2001, “realized he had real problems with the business, and for the first time, he turned the reins over to someone in a way I’d never seen him do before,” says a longtime employee.
Why the decline? One problem was the website. It's Angie's List meets Pinterest. By Catherine Dunn Matt Ehrlichman FORTUNE -- Matt Ehrlichman was between jobs 18 months ago when he and his wife started on that most old-fashioned of projects: building a home.
Like many, he found himself frustrated by the challenges of finding good contractors and design inspiration to transform their parcel of land in Northeast Seattle. So the tech entrepreneur did what entrepreneurs do: Ehrlichman co-founded a new digital endeavor, Porch.com, a site that adds social networking to home improvement and officially launches today (after three months in beta). Think of it as an Angie's List—featuring Pinterest-worthy photos—meets a LinkedIn intended to connect users to professional plumbers, painters, and design firms. MORE: In-flight Internet connections pick up speed The idea is to give an "old school" industry a makeover for the social-sharing era, Ehrlichman says, so that homeowners can easily find out who does good work on homes like theirs, and how much those projects typically cost.
The Value of Customer Reviews. Customer reviews have always been important to businesses.
Customers are much more likely to trust each other than to trust what the business has to say about itself. With so many opportunities to post reviews, customers are seeking out each others’ opinions now more than ever. Consider this. You’re looking for a winter coat. You can read the product descriptions and get an idea of what the coat offers, but reading a review that says the coat isn’t cut out for a Chicago winter gives you a clearer understanding of how the coat holds up.
We’ve always been told that people are more likely to talk about a bad e xperience than a good one. So where do people turn to read these great reviews? Many Better Business Bureau regions now offer the opportunity for customers to write positive, negative and neutral reviews about companies they have had interactions with. Why Consumer Reports Says You Can't Trust Angie's List.
Online Ratings Services. Ain't It Time To Say Goodbye To Angie's List? Why I Believe Yelp is Doomed to Fail. WHY I BELIEVE YELP IS DOOMED TO FAIL8 months ago So I wrote a status update on Facebook yesterday that basically said that I believe Yelp would be out of business in 24 months.
The furor started immediately, but not surprisingly, most people agreed with me, and countless stories of “they removed my positive reviews when I didn’t pay them to advertise” were posted in the comments. The post is here, and I encourage you to read the comments. To the point though, I thought it might be a good idea to summarize my points from FB in a more thought-out post, so here we go. By “out of business” I mean this: The “untrusted/unverified reviews as a viable business model” will die within 24 months. Why is the Yelp “reviews as revenue” model flawed? We’ve already arrived at a trust economy.
Grain 1: They could be biased. FTC Subpoena Revelations, Thousands Of Complaints Send Yelp's Stock Price Tumbling.