News

Woot founder launches new daily deal site Meh

July 9, 2014

In 2004, Matt Rutledge and his colleagues launched the pioneering retail site Woot.com, the first "daily deal" site — only one product was available every day, and when inventory was gone, it was gone. Shoppers would then have to wait until midnight to see what the next day's offering was. Among other things, the site was (and still is) known for copywriting that is heavy on the humor.

In 2010, Woot was acquired by Amazon, and gradually became more and more complex than the initial premise — multiple categories of products, non-time-sensitive deals, and an interface that was a far cry from the site's simplistic roots.

Today, Rutledge and his company Mediocre Labs launched Meh, which appears to be a throwback to the original Woot model. The humor is still there, notably in the description of the product being offered on opening day, which is hard to read and not take as a stab at what Woot has become under Amazon's ownership:

Today is born a daily-deal site in the original mold. A daily-deal site that gets back to basics. A daily-deal site like you don't see anymore: one that only sells a daily deal.

(We're talking about us, if that's not clear.)

But how far back? How basic? How originally moldy? Our answer is the hottest floor-cleaning robot of 2007: the Roomba 560.

If you ask us, the good old 560 was peak Roomba. It was the moment when iRobot put together all the classic features that made Roomba Roomba - the scheduler, two virtual walls, the stair sensor, the anti-tangle technology, the fine filtration system - without any of the finicky refinements that make later Roomba models so expensive.

The site's FAQ page is also laden with the company's self-aware style, and contains many gems like this one:

Q: No Facebook? No Twitter? Are you incompetent?

A: Look, you should like and follow your friends & family, what they’re making, what they’re doing. Stop following businesses. And businesses, quit begging for follows, pleading for email subscribes, and requiring likes to get deals. It demeans us both.