Hi all...just thought I'd give you guys some clarifying points on the popular deal of the days at buy.com.....
whether you believe me or not, I really don't care...but I am in fact one of the lead developers over at buy.com and as a favor to some friends, even reverse engineered how the DOTD system works (i.e. so I could give em a head's up on what items were coming up and at what price).
(and no, I will not post that information here =P)
but there's been some discussions that I've found interesting regarding the DOTD and so I felt I should clear things up...
1) The whole "can you order more than three" thing, AKA "I know this guy who knows this guy who knows this guy who bought 30 dreamcasts and he got them all"
This story is in fact true. Some history....some clever folks in the company decided to this little idea of featuring some item at heavy discount to bring in traffic. It worked spectacularly (I mean many of you stay up late into the night to find the item, don't you?).... they then thought up the rule of a limit of three per customer to try to spread the wealth as much as posssible...
one problem. nobody ever told the IT/programming staff that they'd just made up this rule. Meaning....heh, our basket was never modified to accomodate this. Easy fix then right? Just make a rule....DOTD...three only. Wrong. Problem is since they never told IT they were planning this idea they just kinda hacked together the system w/ tools IT had already built them to promote other items. So heh...the entire system is built on a foundation in which our basket can't f****ing tell that a SKU is a DOTD. =P ooops. the guy in charge of the basket was pissed on this one and I don't see him rebuilding the basket and DOTD system anytime soon.
2) when do these things go up?
it varies actually. No, it's not at the stroke of midnight PST each night. Every night we run literally hundreds of different data processes ranging from getting the latest prices to price engines like shopping.com or cnet to moving all our sales for the day into our accounting systems. among the things that we do.....push the data for the next deal of the day. What this means is that it goes up at a variable time...based primarily on how our internal network is performing at the moment...and that usually varies with how much data is being pushed around our LAN.. ballpark figure is anywhere from 1 am PST to 3 am PST....sorry east coasters, but some of you may have to stay up laaaate into the night if you want to cash in..
3) item selections....
items are selected in advance by a week or more...they're placed into the system a week in advance....with Wednesdays being the day of rotation. Meaning as of Wednesday, we know what items will be going through the system...BUT...product managers on a whim can change the item whenever they feel, even midday if they want..
anyhow...that's bout all...
have fun guys and gals...
whether you believe me or not, I really don't care...but I am in fact one of the lead developers over at buy.com and as a favor to some friends, even reverse engineered how the DOTD system works (i.e. so I could give em a head's up on what items were coming up and at what price).
(and no, I will not post that information here =P)
but there's been some discussions that I've found interesting regarding the DOTD and so I felt I should clear things up...
1) The whole "can you order more than three" thing, AKA "I know this guy who knows this guy who knows this guy who bought 30 dreamcasts and he got them all"
This story is in fact true. Some history....some clever folks in the company decided to this little idea of featuring some item at heavy discount to bring in traffic. It worked spectacularly (I mean many of you stay up late into the night to find the item, don't you?).... they then thought up the rule of a limit of three per customer to try to spread the wealth as much as posssible...
one problem. nobody ever told the IT/programming staff that they'd just made up this rule. Meaning....heh, our basket was never modified to accomodate this. Easy fix then right? Just make a rule....DOTD...three only. Wrong. Problem is since they never told IT they were planning this idea they just kinda hacked together the system w/ tools IT had already built them to promote other items. So heh...the entire system is built on a foundation in which our basket can't f****ing tell that a SKU is a DOTD. =P ooops. the guy in charge of the basket was pissed on this one and I don't see him rebuilding the basket and DOTD system anytime soon.
2) when do these things go up?
it varies actually. No, it's not at the stroke of midnight PST each night. Every night we run literally hundreds of different data processes ranging from getting the latest prices to price engines like shopping.com or cnet to moving all our sales for the day into our accounting systems. among the things that we do.....push the data for the next deal of the day. What this means is that it goes up at a variable time...based primarily on how our internal network is performing at the moment...and that usually varies with how much data is being pushed around our LAN.. ballpark figure is anywhere from 1 am PST to 3 am PST....sorry east coasters, but some of you may have to stay up laaaate into the night if you want to cash in..
3) item selections....
items are selected in advance by a week or more...they're placed into the system a week in advance....with Wednesdays being the day of rotation. Meaning as of Wednesday, we know what items will be going through the system...BUT...product managers on a whim can change the item whenever they feel, even midday if they want..
anyhow...that's bout all...
have fun guys and gals...
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