I think those pointing to his follower count are missing the point. Morton's has established what sounds like a pretty great CRM for their customers. I'd be really interested to know how they're set up.
We live in an age where everyone is a media creator. Instead of spending money on mass advertising campaigns (spray 'n pray) with little lasting value, this type of customer service is like launching smart bombs that target actual customers and the people around them. This story & pictures is now in the internet -- it will be around forever. Is that worth the drive from Hackensack? I bet it is.
I think the question we should be asking ourselves is how can we be this awesome for our customers every day?
Yeah, the CRM was a very interesting side note for me. I wish more companies actually used a CRM and could "personalize" my experience for me, it doesn't even need to be anything big.
This is a great idea, and there is a market for this, as anyone with a baby will tell you. But have you done any customer development? As others have mentioned, you have a lot of competition.
First you have relatives. They buy lots of new clothes for you. Then you have consignment shops for lots of basic items, which as a new parent, you are suddenly very aware of. Finally, you have the parents themselves, who can usually afford to splurge on a nice outfit here or there, after the bulk of clothing's been supplied by #1 and #2.
I just don't see a burning need here that will get you across the chasm.
When you operate at the DNS level, you get to do all kinds of cool things with site traffic. Cloudflare started with a value proposition based on security, but low-cost hardware and advent of cloud technologies have allowed them to easily expand their offering to CDN and apps.
They are freemium because they need to collect as much traffic data as possible to learn to identify threats. Same reasoning as Akismet spam filtering started out with. They also have enterprise level plans, which probably drive more revenue.
Plus, they are only 7 months old. Kinda early to be hatin', no?
Your last point is the rub -- Groupon's creating a "heavy discount" mindset with consumers that often transcends product loyalty.
Groupon's focus is local service businesses, which, if they're smart, can offset the initial discount with upsells (think liquor in a restaurant).
For more commodity type products, there's limited upsell opportunity, so you're very vulnerable to price sensitivity. And price sensitivity, as you point out, will increase if the market is saturated in deals.
It will be interesting to revisit this in a year or so, as the economy turns around, and see if Groupon and others have had to change tactics.
The reason self-publishing works for Doctorow is not because his audience wants it to. It works because he works extremely hard, is prolific, and smartly leverages technology as well as his massive audience at BoingBoing. He is not an overnight sensation. There's no trick here.
Yes, he's taken some risks with technology, but he's also worked hard promoting himself to mitigate that risk.
I am not a fan of his writing, but I admire his dogged determination to get up every day and be a writer, in an age when anyone else you asked would tell you to give up and get a job with a future.
These are difficult to find. In the past, I have found these in individual city GIS department websites, but haven't found a single source that aggregates lots of cities. Quality and formats tend to vary as well.
That's what I'm finding as well. I searched through the Census site and found PUMA references and was able to find some neighborhood data and various local university library pages, but no single source with everything -- besides expensive commercial data sets.
So what's the line on this practice? It does seem to work in out some cases, but entrepreneurs seem to be gaming the system now, which would make this practice a much worse deal for the buying companies.
24 months does seem to be the avg. term, minus let's say, 3 months ramping up and 3 down. Consider weekends and holidays, and companies are not getting much for their dollar.
I understand the company's need to compete in an entrepreneurial market, but the investment doesn't seem to be worth it on it's face.
I can't decide if this is a good or bad thing. I could be wrong, but it feels like a punt by Google. Shouldn't they be owning the quality of their own marketplace?
Gamification is the new forums.