Some people say that Woot got where it is today by stumbling into good
ideas, by parlaying a few happy accidents into online gold. Others say
Woot owes its position to a systematic campaign of dirty tricks,
intimidation, blackmail, and bribery, implicating officials at the
highest levels of government on Earth and elsewhere. To the latter we
say "If you're so smart, where are the indictments?" To the former, we
provide this semi-fictional example of a fortunate stumble.
By now you may have noticed the new Woot podcast, available five sizzling days a week, just like Passions.
Not only does it tell you about our sale for the day, it also provides
some bonus tomfoolery crafted by Matthew, the "cute one" of the Woot
writing team. Matthew says he's "not embarrassed" by any of his podcast
work "yet" - we feel exactly the same way, Matthew!
So where did we grok this leading-edge idea? Basically, we overheard
some cool kids at the bubble tea shoppe talking about podcasting. That
was it - we didn't even catch what podcasting was, exactly, beyond a
vague association with computers. But we knew that we simply must be
involved! Same deal with RSS.
Turns out they're both effective, inventive ways to present Woot as a
forward-looking company and regularly engage our customers. But at the
time, we were just trend-whoring, honest.
It got us thinking, though: what's next? What if the cool kids start
hanging out at, like, Burger King or someplace without telling us, and
we miss our sweet eavesdropping setup? Such a calamity might entail
some actual work on our part, dredging through hundreds of tedious geek
discussion boards and deciphering their arcane techno-pidgin. That's
why we need you to tell us in simple English what's going down on the
Internets circa 2007, and how we can exploit it to peddle more sushi
kits and InFocus TVs. Gaze deeply into your crystal ball, e-Gypsies,
and tell us about the next wave of content delivery. What lies beyond
RSS and podcasting? Is Woot TV lurking in your future? Which
synergistic early-adaptables can we imagineer to upmaximize our
quickonomy metrics? And what's love got to do with it?
