Schadenfreude as a marketing strategy
Hey, it’s worked for Woot. Founder Matt Rutledge explains:
Tens of thousands of folks signed up in the first month or two Woot was established, many to observe the expected other shoe to drop and laugh at the victims. However, in month two we passed 5,000 actual customers who bought something and it started to become fun to participate (in between the server crashes). Incredibly the crude we’ll-do-this-as-a-hobby store that we set up off to the side of our wholesale business was gaining attention and traction. The NY Times and bunches of other media dropped in and things really picked up from there.
Then again, Firefox (2.0.0.16) still apparently considers Woot slightly disreputable: the word spelled that way triggers the spellcheck alarm. This doesn’t happen with “w00t!”
