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Showing 1 of 7818 conversations about:
braswes
110
Nov 10, 2016
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after 2 1/2 years and 27 drops, not getting headphones from this drop is pretty much the end of the line for me.
good luck to everyone else, but I'm done with massdrop. They need to learn to take care of their long time customers first.
Rajiv
31
Nov 10, 2016
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braswesNot to be a d*ck but that would be really unfair for everyone involved and they couldn't have anticipated this much traffic its very expensive to host server that need to process so much data. also when you have been here for 2 1/2 years and lasted through 27 drops why quite here?
braswes
110
Nov 10, 2016
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braswesHere's the thing, reading the comments it looks like an awful lot of the people trying to participate in this drop were "first-timers" to Massdrop. It's more than likely that a majority of them will not be back for future drops. Basic 80/20 rule - 20% of your members generate 80% of your revenue. You gotta take care of the 20%, because if you lose them, you're losing a lot of future business. But the first-timers here only for this drop - not so much.
as far as infrastructure cost - that $40 million in Series B funding should have bought some pretty scalable functionality.
as far as infrastructure cost - that $40 million in Series B funding should have bought some pretty scalable functionality.
Varholiaglimp
939
Nov 11, 2016
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braswesI understand what you're saying, braswes. I've been here since MD's inception and, before that, on Head-fi when group buys first got banned. MD entertained a discussion a year or so ago about offering incentives for long-time high-purchase users in the form of greater access -- perhaps you remember -- and people seemed not to like that idea. I was one of those people. You'd have some support pursuing it, but also considerable opposition.
One problem with applying the idea of purchase-history-based deference to this drop is that people with 6XXs on their transaction lists were promised headphones from the jump. The presence of that item on their list is a tacit promise to them. Most people in that category -- and there are nearly 5,000 -- will get twice as mad if you take their headphones away as the people who never got to buy them at all. If you give them to people on a reconstructed chronological server list instead, you can forget those I'm-never-coming-back posts -- these will become people whom you *hope* will never come back.
Never mind how much work that chronological list would entail -- not the one involving swapping serial numbers (which also sounds nightmarish to implement), but your imaginary list of people who hit the purchase button first and would buy the 6XXs that are on other people's lists. Carrying out that plan would leave the original purchase list barren, causing animosity that dwarfs even the responses of the frustrated people who were unable to buy headphones on this drop. These are people who have been official owners for days, often *in addition* to having to deal with the same server hell that you did.
Also: If you determined ultimate 6XX purchases according to the length of long-term membership and the price and number of purchases in members' histories, you would be introducing variables that were never part of this drop -- variables that would *disqualify members who never would have wasted a moment on this drop if they had known*. Again: massive numbers of people would be incensed; they would be far angrier than anyone here has been so far.
MD probably wants to make the largest number of people happy that it can without permanently alienating members, risking bad press or making stalker-serious enemies. They aren't going to do that by disqualifying new members or taking 6XXs from people who have bought them already and giving them to people on a different kind of list.
And then there's this: ***7,000 people hit the purchase button during the first moment of the drop***. Why are some people certain that they automatically will be included on a purchasing list determined by order of server activity? Even if a person did hit the button in that split second, she might well be user 5,001, and odds are her reflexes or her connection weren't as perfect as she might think.
However you look at it, the allocation was arbitrary to begin with and the reassignment of allocated headphones is going to be arbitrary in effect even if it somehow isn't in execution (which I doubt is truly possible, given the variables involved). You'd be piling more disappointment on top of disappointment.
Using a new list from servers to allocate duplicate headphone purchases isn't going to hurt anyone and that should be done if it isn't insane to implement. It appears that MD is implementing that solution for duplicates already.
One problem with applying the idea of purchase-history-based deference to this drop is that people with 6XXs on their transaction lists were promised headphones from the jump. The presence of that item on their list is a tacit promise to them. Most people in that category -- and there are nearly 5,000 -- will get twice as mad if you take their headphones away as the people who never got to buy them at all. If you give them to people on a reconstructed chronological server list instead, you can forget those I'm-never-coming-back posts -- these will become people whom you *hope* will never come back.
Never mind how much work that chronological list would entail -- not the one involving swapping serial numbers (which also sounds nightmarish to implement), but your imaginary list of people who hit the purchase button first and would buy the 6XXs that are on other people's lists. Carrying out that plan would leave the original purchase list barren, causing animosity that dwarfs even the responses of the frustrated people who were unable to buy headphones on this drop. These are people who have been official owners for days, often *in addition* to having to deal with the same server hell that you did.
Also: If you determined ultimate 6XX purchases according to the length of long-term membership and the price and number of purchases in members' histories, you would be introducing variables that were never part of this drop -- variables that would *disqualify members who never would have wasted a moment on this drop if they had known*. Again: massive numbers of people would be incensed; they would be far angrier than anyone here has been so far.
MD probably wants to make the largest number of people happy that it can without permanently alienating members, risking bad press or making stalker-serious enemies. They aren't going to do that by disqualifying new members or taking 6XXs from people who have bought them already and giving them to people on a different kind of list.
And then there's this: ***7,000 people hit the purchase button during the first moment of the drop***. Why are some people certain that they automatically will be included on a purchasing list determined by order of server activity? Even if a person did hit the button in that split second, she might well be user 5,001, and odds are her reflexes or her connection weren't as perfect as she might think.
However you look at it, the allocation was arbitrary to begin with and the reassignment of allocated headphones is going to be arbitrary in effect even if it somehow isn't in execution (which I doubt is truly possible, given the variables involved). You'd be piling more disappointment on top of disappointment.
Using a new list from servers to allocate duplicate headphone purchases isn't going to hurt anyone and that should be done if it isn't insane to implement. It appears that MD is implementing that solution for duplicates already.
braswes
110
Nov 18, 2016
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VarholiaglimpHere's an interesting quote from a Forbes article about Massdrop
That growth has also been organic, said El-Hage [edit: CEO and co-founder of Massdrop], who noted that up until now, Massdrop has not paid to market its site or its products online. On the contrary, the company initially paid to have its listings rank lower in Google's GOOGL -0.97% pagerank algorithms so that they wouldn’t come up in web searches. That was to maximize the forum-like feel of the site and bring together actual enthusiasts instead of attracting one-time buyers looking for the cheapest possible deal on any given item.
What resonates with me is the statement "bring together actual enthusiasts instead of attracting one-time buyers looking for the cheapest possible deal on any given item. ". It seems to me that on this particular drop they failed in this mission, and in a rather spectacular fashion.
If this site is just going to be a "deal" site, then they are going to lose the "secret sauce" that differentiates them from any of the other deal sites out there.
That growth has also been organic, said El-Hage [edit: CEO and co-founder of Massdrop], who noted that up until now, Massdrop has not paid to market its site or its products online. On the contrary, the company initially paid to have its listings rank lower in Google's GOOGL -0.97% pagerank algorithms so that they wouldn’t come up in web searches. That was to maximize the forum-like feel of the site and bring together actual enthusiasts instead of attracting one-time buyers looking for the cheapest possible deal on any given item.
What resonates with me is the statement "bring together actual enthusiasts instead of attracting one-time buyers looking for the cheapest possible deal on any given item. ". It seems to me that on this particular drop they failed in this mission, and in a rather spectacular fashion.
If this site is just going to be a "deal" site, then they are going to lose the "secret sauce" that differentiates them from any of the other deal sites out there.
deFiniLoGy
97
Nov 18, 2016
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@Cark If you don't have any constructive argument to put forward like an adult, at least watch your tone.
deFiniLoGy
97
Nov 18, 2016
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braswesSorry but I have more important things to do in life than to argue like a robot. Lol.
Cudos for finding the quote btw.
Cudos for finding the quote btw.
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