Over the next 24 hours, loyal wooter, you’re going to hear a lot of
nasty rumors about Woot getting into bed with a big corporation. We’re
here to tell you that they’re all true. We’d hoped to announce the
grand opening of Halliburton.Woot tonight, but our security clearances were revoked (long story). So we turned away from the dark side and found one of the good guys to work with. Beginning at midnight CDT tonight, Woot and Yahoo! will be partners in a new venture we’re
calling Sellout.Woot. (We’d link to the front page right now, but we can’t, exactly.
More on that in a minute.) If you need a light for your cigar, you can
use one of our new hundred-dollar bills.
Yes, it’s the same Yahoo! you’re thinking of. They came to Woot with the idea that we could spruce up Yahoo! Shopping
by offering an exclusive daily deal through them. Fortunately for us,
they also wheeled up a barrowful of sweet, metaphorical cash, in the
form of access to their gigunda audience of shoppers who’ve never met
Woot. Far be it from us to pass up an opportunity to synergize! We’re,
uh, idealistic that way. The upshot is that Sellout.Woot will offer a
Woot-style daily deal that’s different from the one on Woot.com, seven
days a week.
Of course, no catch, no cash, metaphorical or
not. And the catch is, you can only reach Sellout.Woot through Yahoo!
Shopping’s front page at shopping.yahoo.com (after we launch at midnight tonight, that is).
It’s a pain, we know, but one of the benefits of sponsorship is that
Yahoo! gets to lure you all through their front door. Like everything
else in this experimental venture, that door might occasionally get
stuck. Rest assured that any such mishaps won’t keep you from getting a
Bag O’ Crap – we’re contractually obligated to keep our crap to
ourselves.
Otherwise, this Yahoo! partnership gives us some
room to experiment. We can push our product envelope, stretch our
marketing muscles, and hook whole new demographic cohorts on the Woot
narcotic. We can follow our mentally unstable muses without inflicting
any pain on you guys (well, any more than usual, anyway). All the
classic Woot identifying features – daily deals, bustling forums,
obnoxious humor – will still be fully present and accounted for.
If
you’re already a Woot member, your existing account works with
Sellout.Woot, too. It should be fascinating to see how the
battle-scarred, ultra-cynical Woot audience interacts with the Yahoo!
Shopping crowd. We’re not sure if this mixture will turn out like
chocolate and peanut butter, or ammonium nitrate and gasoline.
So
there it is: snot-nosed little Woot holding hands with big button-down
Yahoo!, as we skip together towards a shining new era in ecommerce. And
it all starts at midnight tonight. See you at Yahoo! Shopping – we’ll be the goofballs over in the corner, giggling and counting our money.
