Prime Day: worst Woot-Off ever?

Ooh, tough Prime Day, Amazon. We’ve been there, man. We feel for you, we really do. Some of those sick Twitter burns reminded us of the Woot forums during the wild old days. Some of those bruises are still tender.

Ouch. People just don’t get how hard it is to put together an exciting deal event. We totally understand that when you have 1500 deal slots to fill in one day, a 55-gallon drum of lube can start to look pretty good.

Sellouts are a double-edged sword, too. You’re damned if you offer stuff that nobody wants; you’re damned if you offer stuff that too many people want. How do you drive demand without driving it right off a cliff? It’s a tough game, believe us.

Of course, the ad blitz didn’t help. When you promise a nonstop consumer party and deliver $2.39 off a pair of compression socks, the loudmouth haters are gonna pounce. You never hear much from the people who bought those socks, do you? You never see satisfied customers getting retweeted by Time and Buzzfeed.

Some might say that “excitement” isn’t really Amazon’s thing. Excitement requires risk, uncertainty, the unexpected when you least expect it. Your whole vast company is optimized to reliably deliver exactly what customers expect all the time. You’re probably hearing people tell you to stick to what you know.

But people were skeptical that you could produce original TV programming, too. And that did get off to a rough start. But within a year or two you were making some of the most acclaimed shows anywhere, and signing up people like Spike Lee and Woody Allen and Kanye West. You figured TV out. You can probably figure out this event-based ecommerce thing that we do.

So we’ll be watching on Prime Day 2016. And not because we’re hoping for some schadenfreude. We’ll be watching to see what you’ve learned. And to find some good deals. And OK, maybe a little hoping for some schadenfreude.