The people making the web a better place aren’t always the big names you find slobbered all over ValleyWag. The people making the web are people like you, me, or the girl sitting next to you. That’s why this week we’re featuring Woot! Agent. What Carlo Massaro did was take a great idea and created a simple solution to help everyday Wooters get their fix. When passion meets utility it can be a beautiful thing.
And that’s exactly how Woot! Agent came to be. What Massaro created was an act of passion - he’s a Woot fan himself. Together, Carlo and his partner, Steven Kovar, created a small desktop application (yup, it’s Windows only) that helps wooters beat the Woot! game, or at least try to (if you don’t know what Woot! is then read their FAQ). Michael Arrington, of TechCrunch, summed it up when he featured Woot Agent and noted, “We’ve all seen this before. Passionate users want more or different functionality for a given product, and they build it themselves rather than wait. Sometimes it is done purely for passion, other times there’s a profit motive…”
And just like that the Woot! Agent product continues to grow. Even though it’s a small grassroots operation, created and organized by two men, there’s a Woot! Agent community full of passionate wooters driving new releases and helping to provide product feature requests and bug *gasp* control. Actually, Woot! Agent recently released Text-Message alerts as well as AIM message alert functionality for their product. I talked to Carlo about Woot!, his affiliation(or lack of) to Woot!, what it’s like developing a project piggy backing on a larger brand, and doing it for “the love”.
Name, age, first item you ever bought on woot.com, and when you sleep at night you dream about…?
Carlo, 18, Picked up a set of two ear buds on a two for Tuesdays deal, and I can never remember what I dream about. The harder I think of what the dream was about, the more it slips away.
Steven, 20, I haven’t bought anything so far, but I find myself checking woot! all the time in case a great item comes along that I can’t resist. The good items I HAVE come across were sold out, naturally.
In five words describe WootAgent.
Up to minute Woot! updates
What is Woot! and what is your relationship to Woot!?
In a nutshell, Woot! sells one item a day, usually technology-related, until it sells out. If you’re one of the poor souls who miss out on today’s deal, you have to wait until tomorrow’s item. We aren’t directly related to Woot!, but the fellows over at Woot! have seen our application and thought well of it. We’d like to develop WootAgent further, and hopefully we can work directly with Woot! to make it as best as possible.
What was your inspiration for building WootAgent if you’re not associated to Woot.com?
We are ‘Wooters’ ourselves, and wanted to create a system that performed the tasks we wanted to use. We figured if WE wanted these things other Wooters did too, so the app was made to accommodate as many users as possible. We’ve gone from solving our own problem to making the lives of the entire Woot! community easier’at least when it comes to Woot!.
What was the most fun aspect when building WootAgent?
We’ve worked on other projects together, and we enjoy each one more and more. The best part of making WootAgent was seeing it come together after we added the gui to it; It looks sharp.
Why build WootAgent and not just use tools that currently exist such as RSS reader/notification systems like Rmail or feedblitz? How does your product differentiate itself from rss to email tools?
WootAgent is almost completely customizable, and more notably users don’t need to keep a browser open, or don’t even need to be AT the computer to know there’s a new item. Just turn your sound up and make sure you don’t pull a muscle in your frantic sprint back to the computer.
What has become WootAgent’s most popular feature?
Users like how easy it is to install and use. Sound notifications are probably the most popular feature though. Several users have noted that upon hearing the ‘new woot’ signal, they rushed to their computers and snatched an item before most Wooters even knew it was out.
How much time did it take to build the first stable version of WootAgent and what were the costs involved?
Building WootAgent was pretty quick. Upon realization and planning what features we’d want our program to have, we found a great programmer who could make it a reality. He’s very passionate about WootAgent (he’s a Wooter too) and has added some features of his own to give the app a more personal touch. Designing and programming took a little over 2 weeks to get to our first release version, WootAgent 1.0. Since all three of us are users of Woot!, the costs were low (under $300). We ran off of the desire to help other Woot! users rather than worrying how much money we were spending or how much time we invested. This is how most projects should be taken care of.
What type of testing did WootAgent undergo and what tools did you use to test performance and cross-platform capability?
We belong to several online communities with over 100,000 users, so it made sense to seek out beta testers interested in Woot! who could give completely unbiased opinions. We found around 100 people who knew about Woot! and wanted to test the app out for us, and it turned out well. Initial testing was pretty simple. After testing the app, we had them fill out a simple form to give their opinion of the app and what they found wrong with it. Thanks to the beta testing we have only come across one issue since release. We only designed the app to run on Windows, though we’re looking into a Mac version, so that cut down many of the platform issues that could have run into. We really appreciate the help of all the beta testers too; it saved us a LOT of effort.
What is the greatest piece of advice you can offer someone looking to create complimentary services to larger, more well known products like Woot itself?
Make a service or product you like and will use yourself. We spent several VERY long nights to get the application completed quickly, and if we weren’t passionate users of Woot! we would have stopped short and the app would still be under construction. It’s pretty clich, but if you’re working on something just because you think there is great return, the return you do get will hardly feel worth the effort.
How have the founders of Woot responded to your product, if at all? Have they expressed interest to incorporate it onto their site?
We’ve gotten a response from Woot! saying they loved our application and they’ve asked us to continue its development. We’re not sure whether or not they would like to incorporate WootAgent onto their site itself, but that would definitely be an option we’d love to discuss. Our aims are to help Wooters regardless of where the app ends up, be it endorsed by Woot! or forced ‘underground’. We’re lucky Woot! is a great company and supports projects like WootAgent.
As far as getting your product off the ground and creating some excitement about your product, what are some successes you’ve had and what have been some failures?
We’re both big into marketing and love to take a personal approach. Sending individualized emails to editors and bloggers has helped us greatly, both in generating new users and creating a positive image for WootAgent. It’s hard to think very low of something that major blogs like TechCrunch and even Woot! itself endorses. Again, with the massive communities we’re active in; we’ve easily found some of our most enthusiastic users thanks to our efforts in finding beta testers and paying to have threads ’stickied’ where we can talk one-to-one with the users, instead of throwing a banner in their face that has no more substance than the spam you get in the mail. We really like the idea behind big-time marketer Seth Godin; what he coins as ‘Permission Marketing,’ where the business markets to those who have given them permission to, such as our beta testers and people subscribed to technology blogs and whatnot. We strongly recommend reading Seth’s book Permission Marketing (permission.com).
We published a press release via PRWeb.com on March 3rd which has brought a few page views to our site, but that’s about as far as it got. We weren’t expecting all too much from it, and we’re glad to see we got several pick ups. It’s not a failure, as any publicity is good publicity (in most cases), but it’s nothing to write home about.
Best compliment you received about your product?
Our best compliment wasn’t so much a compliment as it was a beta tester, before we even released, saying how he used WootAgent to buy two items from Woot!. We thought that was the greatest thing and to see other users loving the app just as much makes all the effort worth it.
How did the TechCrunch coverage you received benefit the product beyond exposure? And how did you go about acquiring TechCrunch coverage?
We emailed Michael over at TechCrunch telling him we were developing an app to help Woot! users and he picked it up and ran with it. We were elated when he posted his entry talking about WootAgent and to see all the positive feedback supporting endeavors like ours. It’s helped WootAgent be seen as a very ‘legit’ service and that is more valuable than anything else to us; being seen as THE app to use to keep up with Woot!.
I noticed that you publish the number of users using WootAgent. Is that number the active users or the number of people who have downloaded WootAgent? And what was the catalyst for publishing that number on your site?
The number shows how many people have downloaded the app. We put it there because we think it’s fun to see how many other people are using the same service as you. Just like Myspace shows the 11ty bajillion people in your network, we wanted to show how many people have come to use WootAgent. As the number grows larger and larger, it will also be a good way to prove to new users that other people like the app and they should get it too.
Best item you ever bought on Woot! and why?
We haven’t bought too many items off of Woot! yet. We are still waiting for the next Woot-off so we can hopefully capture a ‘bag o’ crap’.
If you could change one thing about Woot! what would it be?
We would ban the iRobot Roombas from being sold. It must be some sick twisted joke to have it being sold so often. It makes for good humor though.
Name your favorite websites to buy things online?
Froogle is becoming a favorite. Newegg.com is great as well. It all really depends on what you’re looking for. The great thing about the web is that there are so many options.
Websites you must visit every day?
When you’re not working on WootAgent you are doing what?
Working on other projects. We love to stay busy and are fascinated by the young developed industry we call the web. It’s matured so quickly over the last few years and we can’t wait to see where it takes us. We’re both also huge fans of football, or soccer if you will. We love having fun with work and always try and find cool new projects to work on.
If there was one item you’d want to see on Woot (so you could buy it) what it be?
Hands down…
