Wouldn't it be great if we could tell which deals people actually bought?
When I come to deals.woot, I'm usually looking for a good price on a worthwhile product. They're always here somewhere, but they seem harder and harder to find. Searching for "top" deals usually brings up a bunch of junk that people appreciate, but no one would actually buy. Shouldn't we live in a world where upvotes without purchases carry less weight?
by
andypar
asked 4 months ago
I say this politely; I understand your question but the internet knows too much about me as it is, no one needs to know what I do or do not purchase on deals.woot.
@andypar: "Shouldn't we live in a world where upvotes without purchases carry less weight?"
Three points:
(1) We live in a world where very few important things require participation to have an opinion. A perfect example is politics, where people clueless about candidate's stance on the issues are permitted to vote for that candidate.
(2) What about people who have experience about a given deal from previous purchases? If yesterday's deal for widgets at $5/pound was great and I purchased a two year supply, does the fact that I will not need widgets for another two years mean that today's deal at $4/pound is not a better one than yesterday's deal?
(3) Very, very few of the companies with deals posted here have any relationship with deals.woot. How would deals.woot monitor purchases? What about people who purchase, but later return an item? Would their votes be recinded?
Also, what @xdavex said (or wrote).
In addition to what's already been said (and both of those comments are spot on), all this would do is to increase the number of shills telling you that they've bought from a site and the deals were wonderful, the shipping was the best, and so on and so on...
If someone I've seen here on Deals for quite a while says that they've purchased multiple times from a site, and been happy about it, I trust them. I only purchased from Meritline and Housewaresdeals.com after I'd seen others that said they were worthwhile (they are).
If I say I've purchased from a site, in a comment, I have. Just because someone (this includes me) posts a deal from somewhere, doesn't mean you can trust it. You should do your own due diligence before giving your hard-earned $$$ and personal information to strangers.
HTH HAND TTFN
Woot is a business: Every visitor to the site is a potential clicker/buyer and represents a money making opportunity. In general, the more people visiting a website, the more money the website makes.
That "junk" attracts page views, which in turn helps the advertising department sell ad space, which in turn helps Woot! bring great products at low prices to it's clients, all while keeping the shipping cost to a flat $5.
i like rainbow sprinkles on my ice cream pie.
It's an interesting idea and I think that people do pay attention when someone talks about their experience buying or having bought an item, but that doesn't necessarily translate into popularity. Since the number of comments on an item is a way to sort posts, maybe you can see if that hierarchy helps you.
You would like to know what I buy on deals.woot ??? Seriously? Hmmm Guess I'll have to buy the missile house under a different name since I consider my purchases private info. Government entities excluded, of course. :-/
I think just knowing how many people have clicked thru is good enough.
I'm sure the bean counters know the average % of purchases per click-thru's. Maybe the monitors would like to share that number.(not for my sake, it'd just be another useless number taking up drive space in my head. matter o' fact, I'm bailing this thread before it potentially becomes mathematically intensive)
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- Asked
- 4 months ago
- Asked By
- andypar
- Answered
- 8 times
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- 166 times
- Voted Against
- 2 times
- Voted For
- 24 times
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