Meh, Year Two: The Platform

The experimental phase is over. We’ve got 366 days of data about Meh. We now have a firm baseline. Or, if you will, a foundation. A foundation of information about the performance of various deals under various conditions. Now, in the next phase, we’ll build a platform on that foundation. And the deck screws of that platform will be our keen analytical insights, and the stain on the boards of that platform will be -

Maybe this metaphor has outlived its usefulness. The point is, Meh isn’t an experiment anymore. It’s now a platform for comparing future performance to past results, to ranking events against each other. Anybody who wants to can dig through our forum for data and commentary on past sales. Or use Google to search our back pages. Or even build your own Meh data-aggregation tool like @lichme did.

Of course, there’s also the data in our gut. We can sense when a deal will poke your pleasure centers, and when it goes in one ear and out the other. And in a voice redolent of 7-11 taquitos and microwave hot wings, our gut tells us that today’s Onkyo receiver is one of our better ones. It’s a beyond-entry-level receiver from an elite brand. And you know how we feel about receivers for less than $200.

And the non-gut data mostly agrees. When we peddled this last month, we moved 958 of them, very satisfactory for a big-ticket item. But there’s one weird anomaly in the historical record: we haven’t heard much from those 958 buyers about how their Onkyo receiver worked out. Maybe there’s just not much to say about the performance of a receiver. But that never stopped our kind of people from talking before.

So we’re calling on all of those purchasers to post a review in today’s forum. How’s your Onkyo been these first few weeks? Best purchase or worst mistake you ever made? Good and bad, warts and all: this platform needs some straight talk. For prospective buyers who don’t trust us, who don’t put any stock in Amazon reviews, maybe the opinions of their fellow Meh habitues will carry some weight.

At some point, we’ll have better, easier, more robust tools for slicing and dicing all of this data we’ve piled up. Leaderboards would be fun. But that only makes sense when there’s enough data to reach meaningful conclusions - a point we’ve reached with our first year of experimental results. For now, let’s all climb onto the platform!

OK, that wasn’t as rousing as it sounded in our heads. Anyway, it should be fun if you like geeking out on stats about inconsequential activities.