Hi, Matt Rutledge here, founder and CEO of
Woot Inc. I’ve asked our creative team (Jason, Matthew, Scott, Dave)
here on the main Woot blog to clear a bit of blog-room for me in the coming weeks. They look
like they’re having fun with these lists, spoofs and parodies
that sneak over in my woot RSS feed. So I
want to try my hand at this, though with one eye on the business
reality of woot. Things like company strategy, crazy ideas, shout-backs,
complaints, observations, bragging - you know, the kind of stuff other more free wheelin' Web 2.0
CEOs do to pump up their egos.
Oddly enough, this is my first
official CEO blog post, even though conceptually we started out Woot by planning the first blog+store. Conversely, my forum activity isn’t exactly lacking in
it’s verbosity over the years. With 1800+ posts now, my account resembles those ultra-active Wooters in the Everything But Woot forums. Some long time Wooters and a few recent
bag-o-crappers may know me through these forum posts—or more precisely
they know me in my fun role as an anonymous staffer named Snapster.
Undoubtedly my Snapster persona will now be decidedly even less cool
with this morbid CEO association revealed, but at least I can count on many people
not reading here. So if you see me goofing off in the forums, don’t
tell on me. Just grin and think how insane I must be, arguing with
people who just want to buy stuff, trying to make BOC purchase attempts fair, or even defending SmartPost (impossible as that may seem).
I can think of a few things worth broadly mentioning for this to go well:
- I
do not actively use our forum Private Message system, so don’t expect
me to reply there quickly if at all. See below on product/transaction trouble. If
you have something relevant and personal to tell me, our woot staff email is first
initial, last name @woot.com.
- Let’s keep things casual
here. I will be posting with my own grammatical and spelling errors
entact (and intact). We have great writers at woot for reasons that
will become apparent, I’m sure. I'm just a hack.
- Email service@woot.com
for transactional issues – I am not nearly as fast or reliable as
sending our team of people a direct message. They have tools and
immediate access to your order info that I do not. There are no special service options here; In fact I wrote the ruder FAQ entries.
- Remember
the number of total quantities sold when making (or reading) product
related feedback (see first post of each product). Sales stats are
posted to increase the intelligence of conversation and expectations –
scope is really relevant and often underestimated.
- The very
large majority of Woot members have never commented and nor will they be reading a specific blog entry. I occasionally
remind staff and observers that no matter how great the participation
is and vocal response is, the silent majority is to be considered unspoken. We are
all their interpreters.
Also, regardless of whether
they are posted in response to a blog post from me or (perhaps more
appropriately) over in the World of Woot as a discussion thread: Thank
you for posting about any Woot experiences, good ones and especially
bad ones that can help us improve. My time spent here may be hit or
miss depending on other duties, but I will eventually read and react to
all messages.
So my starter topic is to test the waters by asking for input. Any
insider info, curiosity or complaint about woot you’d like us to blog on later or
simply reply on now? Product requests? Feature requests? Fire at will.
