Deal-A-Day Expansion

Way back when, Woot! had one deal each day for some random electronic thing and there were a limited number available. When they sold out (sometimes within minutes), that was it. If you didn’t show up in time, you lost…come back tomorrow. People stayed up refreshing their browsers for the chance that today would feature Woot’s legendary “Bag of Crap.”

It seems now that “Deal-A-Day” sites are everywhere, focusing on every possible category and location. In fact, the natural direction for Groupon (going public), Living Social, and now Google Offers, AmazonLocal, Facebook, Yelp, even the New York Times is to provide more and more deals. That means more email marketing messages, more cities, more categories, more of more.

So many more deals that it is hard to hold our attention. The deals become less powerful, less remarkable. Too many things are claiming to be special. When everything is special, nothing is.

Last I checked, I can only focus on one thing at a time.

Time for the next big idea.

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