Marc Andreessen predicts
the end of traditional retail.
Retail chains are a fundamentally implausible economic structure if there’s a viable alternative. You combine the fixed cost of real estate with inventory, and it puts every retailer in a highly leveraged position. Few can survive a decline of 20 to 30 percent in revenues. It just doesn’t make any sense for all this stuff to sit on shelves. There is fundamentally a better model.
posted by beagle
on Jan 31, 2013 -
113 comments
Omaha rockers Cursive are selling their new album for just $1... No wait, it's $2... $3... $4... WTF?? In yet another twist on the whole, name-your-price (
Radiohead), fan-financed (
Jill Sobule), take-shrooms-and-cruise-hollywood (
Josh Freese) tiered pricing experiment being carried out by what's left of the music industry, Cursive are increasing the price of their new record by $1 each day until its "official" release. Given the popularity of sites like
Did it Leak (and the corresponding file-sharing forums that I won't link to here) it seems to me like this is a pretty good way to reward well-intentioned but impatient fans who might otherwise resort to less honorable means of getting the latest stuff from their favorite bands. Or maybe it's just another hare-brained scheme that will only hasten the end of record labels as we know them. Either way, they got my $1... And that was after I already got my hands on the mp3s!
posted by idontlikewords
on Mar 2, 2009 -
23 comments
We all know The Rapture is coming soon (although "no one knows the day or hour"), and many of us will want to send out appropriate taunting messages from our heavenly perch to our loser buddies that didn't get chosen. At last, a service provider has arisen to serve this need. At
You've Been Left Behind, you can store up to 250 MB of documents to be sent to up to 62 separate emails addresses in the event of the Rapture. Rapture is determined to have occurred when 3 of the 5 team members fail to log in to the site over a 3 day period.
posted by jonson
on Jun 3, 2008 -
146 comments
HowItSucks.com rates products based on recent reviews from other users. The rating system is simple: the longer the red bar, the more it sucks. Just in time for Xmas. Also, comes free of charge with
blog, which also sucks.
[more inside]
posted by psmealey
on Nov 30, 2007 -
14 comments
Polluting the blogosphere businessweek is writing about a new company that is basically paying bloggers to write about products --- disclosure is optional...
congratulations marketers --- you ruin everything
posted by bliss322
on Jun 30, 2006 -
44 comments
This flash demo for IKEA's kitchen stuff is kinda fun to play with. Takes a bit of time to load, when it does, click the mouse & hold down on the right or left halves of the photo, it's interesting.
Note - the flash stuff contains audio, so careful with speaker volume
posted by jonson
on Jun 3, 2006 -
31 comments
As a proud patriot & supporter of our nation's armed forces, my greatest personal shame comes from the fact that my pugs aren't fit for service (Lola has cuddling issues that would prove a hindrance on the battlefield, whereas Oscar would run afowl of the "don't ask, don't tell" laws). Fortunately, the good people at
Pets In Uniform will gladly do an
awful photoshop job to make it look like they
actually served their nation proudly.
posted by jonson
on Feb 8, 2006 -
34 comments
woot.com One item per day, until midnight, or until they run out of stock. Innovative ecommerce at its best.
posted by blue_beetle
on Jan 10, 2006 -
64 comments
Scott McCloud and
Clay Shirky are trading ideas on
Micropayemnts again.
Clay Says user-pays schemes can't simply be restored through minor tinkering with payment systems, because they don't address the cause of that change -- a huge increase the power and reach of the individual creator..
Scott Says micropayments, well,
BitPass are here to stay this time.
As a content
producer I like the idea, but as a content
consumer I'm just not sure yet.
If mefi went Micro, would you pay?
posted by Blake
on Sep 13, 2003 -
28 comments
Escrew Service. Worried about getting scammed on an Internet auction? "Just use an escrow service," is the customary advice. Not so fast. The latest auction scam is an elaborate swindle involving creation of fake escrow services, complete with convincing Web sites like www.escrow-is.com
posted by srboisvert
on Jul 9, 2002 -
2 comments
The Shy Girl's Guide to becoming a Whore is an online tutorial for women considering becoming an escort by using the technologies of the Internet. The web has changed the nature of prostitution offering women more opportunities than the traditional street walker, escort. or brothel models. We now have the 21st century CyberWhore model, and this is an overview as to how it is done.
posted by jcterminal
on Mar 20, 2002 -
16 comments
The founders of Webshots.com sold out to Excite@home in '99 for $82.5M, they just bought it back--for $2.4M. $6.7B Excite.com goes for $10M and Blue Mountain Greetings ($780M) goes for $35M. A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon we're talking more than pocket change.
posted by m@
on Jan 8, 2002 -
12 comments
Is E-Commerce dead, past its prime, or just resting? This journal special issue has some interesting thoughts about the future of E-Commerce. I especially liked the
paper by Peffers. The conventional wisdom at this point is that B2C E-Commerce is viable only for certain types of products or contexts. Others (e.g.
Andy Grove, Michael Porter) seem to think that in the future, all commerce will be E-Commerce and will be integrated with physical companies. Then there is the M-Commerce angle- e.g. DoCoMo. What do you make of all of this? How will we be shopping and communicating in the future?
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy
on Dec 11, 2001 -
13 comments
From
the ashes, rises
the phoenix. A company named WhyRunOut has taken over where Webvan left off (or they just bought my personal data from the webvan firesale). Hopefully they'll expand slowly and get profitable, it'd be nice to see Kozmo and Webvan like services come back.
posted by mathowie
on Oct 15, 2001 -
18 comments
The Cluetrain Manifesto gives real insight into the future of commerce on the net. Anyone with a stake in the online business scene should study this document.
posted by fbeach
on May 21, 2001 -
9 comments
Wine.com Inc. ceases operations and refers customers to eVineyard, billed as the largest online wine retailer. The email they sent doesn't make it clear if we are now eVineyard members or if we have to sign up again -- and recreate my my 10-page wine.com wish list. Ugh.
posted by thescoop
on Apr 28, 2001 -
15 comments
April 3rd is "Take Back the Net" day. Only 12 days until they ask you to buy something from your favorite online store, or buy stock in the company to send a message to the world that the Internet Economy will survive. Does anyone smell a cute marketing scare tactic? "I gotta buy TiVo, or Amazon will die and I need my books and movies $3 cheaper!"
posted by Mark
on Mar 22, 2001 -
3 comments
ever wish those new laptops were a little cheaper? hackers have found a simple way of changing the prices on e-commerce sites and then submitting a purchase order with the new price...all in the "edit page" feature of your browser... suddenly network security is not the only thing to be aware of with online transactions.
posted by zerotype
on Mar 21, 2001 -
29 comments
DotComGuy leaves house; world fails to care. For those who weren't paying attention to this, The Story Of The Year, some schmuck renamed himself DotComGuy, moved into a house, and lived off e-tailers for an entire year to prove that the Internet helps commerce. Or something. The experiment proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, nothing.
posted by solistrato
on Jan 2, 2001 -
3 comments
