Care to join me in congratulating Tim Storm, founder of FatWallet.com?
One of the online deal industries founding fathers, Tim Storm has sold his business to a new eBates holding company. Tim says he's staying on as strategic advisor and the site will remain running separately, but this is a great opportunity to give him the props he and his team deserve for being pioneers of online deal communities.
tim's message on fatwallet:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/1123529/
Fatwallet and their community were instrumental in Woot's 2004 launch - I would estimate that half of our customer base in months 1 and 2 were fatwallet members (the other half were probably Engaget.com readers, now an AOL company... sigh)
Did you or do you use Fatwallet? Have any stories of the early days of online deal hunting?
Without Fatwallet I might have never learned the term "asshat"
Congratulations Tim - you built a great team.
by
snapster
asked 9 months ago
trying to think back here when I would have first used Fatwallet and I bet it was 2001-2002 time period.. it was already quite robust by the time I stepped in and looked around.
what? 'asshat' came from fat wallet?? just for that alone, i'd like to congratulate him. well...that and the whole being 'instrumental to woot' thing.
(southpark) TIMMY!!! (/southpark)
@carl669: did a quick search and there are a few claims of FARK pushing it to popularity.. (same era, so wouldn't be surprising) it's probably one of those "we'll never know where it came from" terms.. (woot is essentially in same bucket, although there are a lot of people who are stupidly passionate about their claim to know it)
Any relation to fathead.com?
Our downtime didn't help but I gather that our regulars were never fatwallet users? anyone?
Not me.
*disambiguating edit: That is to snapster's "regulars" question, not to congratulating Mr. Storm.
@snapster: actually, i did use fatwallet, but not consistently. i think i mainly used it around the time when i knew there were sales going on (black friday, labor day, day after xmas, etc). i go there a lot more often now. although, i'm torn between them and slickdeals.
edit: oh, and of course, deals.woot
@carl669: I guess I expected more of us and enjoyment of the conversation of deal sites in general. maybe this is too obtuse a lead-in for that general conversation, but it was a notable event to me.
I found SlickDeals to be easier to use than FW. I also find the people on SD to be quite amusing.
@fenstar: do you know if they editorially pick their front page deals or is it democratic?
@snapster: I believe that the mods choose the front page deals, but I also think it is heavily based on the thread rating. Often times mods will add deals that don't immediately go to the front page, instead another mod makes them front page later. To me, that suggests that a large part of the judgment is based on ratings, but I don't know for sure.
@snapster: I'd never EVER heard of Fatwallet, other than the odd reference here and there, over on Woot. I've never used it; I admit to not being sure what it is (no need for anyone to explain).
Speaking as a "regular" here on Deals, for the sake of completion.
Ditto to what Shrdlu said. I had never heard of it until I saw it here referenced on deals
Thanks for the kind words! The last 12 years have been an incredible journey. I'm glad to have found an opportunity for the company I started to continue on in good hands.
I didn't learn about Woot from FatWallet, but I did find out about both of them at around the same time way back when you could actually /get/ a BOC when you saw them come up! Big congrats to Tim, for sure. FW is a great site/community and has done wonders for my frugal purchasing tendencies over the years. Best of luck moving forward, Tim.
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