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How Alibaba Turned November 11 Into the World's Biggest Online Shopping Day
hackingbear writes Bummed that you're home alone on date night, or stuck in your mom's basement, yet again? Don't worry. A new gadget or some scuba gear could help. Observed on November 11 — or "11.11," for the date with the most 1s — Singles Day, which started out as a joke among a group of male college students attending Nanjing University in the 1990s, has become the world's biggest online shopping day, thanks to the e-commerce prowess of China's Alibaba Group. On this day last year, they sold twice what all US companies sold on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. This year, Alibaba has decided to take its 11.11 promotions worldwide, highlighting global brands including online jewelry store Blue Nile, clothing brand Juicy Couture, and even Costco. Amazon has tried to get a piece of the action. The Seattle-based company launched promotions for the holiday last year on its Chinese site, and it's done so again this year.
Alibaba! has many, many thieves !
Obviously just about any date you can pick is probably going to have some importance _somewhere_ in the world. This time it just happens to be Canada.
November 11'th is Remembrance Day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day) here in Canada, and unlike many of our holidays, this is actually one that most Canadians do take seriously.
Who really, REALLY doesn't give a shit?
People just need a reason to spend money, so make up a reason and exploit it.
meh...
What is this "date night"? Does not every night have a date?
If you have a billion people, then anything that goes viral goes viral fast.
That doesn't mean anyone elsewhere gets it.
Hopefully for the Commonwealth-localized pages (UK, CA, AU, NZ) they'll put up a poppy for Remembrance Day:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_poppy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Flanders_Fields
I'm a little offended that they chose Remembrance Day for their shopping extravaganza.
While the 11th Novemeber is remembrance day here in Canada you might want to remember that since it is to commemorate the end of the First World War it is also an important date for the entire Commonwealth and even the US has Veteran's Day. So, as days go, for a large number of countries this is actually a really bad one to select to celebrate rampant consumerism.
For them to celebrate fucking the veterans over their benefits. Shopping... Yeah... It's the republican thing to do.
Don't take the chance! Stay safe and shop AMERICAN.
by emphasizing certain days we create a production and shipping pipe that is larger than required... much like an 8 lane highway that sides idle for all but a few hours each day
perhaps better to identify which days receive the least orders and offer discounts on those days or raising prices on the most popular days, this allows building manufacture and shipping pipes that can be optimally sized
Talk about test a system! Let's just see how much volume they can handle. I predict sewver overlord. er severe overload.
The accusation:
Getting FRIST PSOT is a big deal on Slashdot. I am proud of every one I get and I give congrats to others when they get it.
I have noticed though that many first posts get reordered. It is not right to be taking away a man's (or woman's) first post like that!
Thank you all for taking the time to read this. You have a great community here.
Nuff said. Yippppeeee to all!
The response:
It happens all the time. The first post doesn't keep its position if its rating is low enough to expunge it from the first 50 comments loaded. Comments which are loaded with the "Load all comments" button always appear below the initially loaded comments, even if they were posted earlier.
Kudos to our courageous whisteblower.
In my country (Australia) Alibaba has ZERO marketing presence. They have an local variant of the site but it's not as if most people would know. No ads anywhere on any media, no word of mouth, no news stories, no mindshare to speak of. I'm not saying that Australia's in any way significant to their profits or the global space, but fuck me, if I didn't tech sites such as Slashdot (who treat Alibaba as passively as any other company) I wouldn't have even heard of them, much less been away of just how big they are compared to eBay.
It's like these guys came out of nowhere. I'm actually fucking scared these guys are doing so well, mostly because they're Chinese. Not being racist (trying to to be anyway), but they should have this much power, and I don't generally trust supercorps to begin with.
http://www.aliexpress.com/cate...
I've found it to be very friendly, with free shipping to the States on almost every purchase. Downside is that the free shipping goes through Singapore Post and takes a month or two to arrive here.
But the prices are really cheap, and customer support surprisingly good. Amazon had better watch out!
Hear ye, hear ye, we herewith declare as "Firsters" those who seek to expose and fix the "Slashdot Frist Psot Conspiracy!"
While nothing is obvious except in retrospect, we are seeing a marriage of western capitalism and collectivism that yields both humorous and strange offspring which may be the basis for much of the 21st century. Christmas may have driven consumerism in the latter 20th, but I suspect that we will see commercial and cultural traditions emerge and mutate at an accelerating rate.
Here in Canada, November 11 is called "Remembrance Day". It's the one day of the year when we pay special attention to those who fell in service of our country.
So thanks anyway, Communist China. But shove your slimy promotions of your second-rate trash sideways up your ass.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
They chose it because it is 11/11. Should Chinese companies care about all of the western holidays? Do western companies care about Chinese holidays? Most countries in the world don't give a shit about some stupid war that happened a century ago.
On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the guns went silent.
I guess China wasn't in World War one
But its not quite so important in Australia and New Zealand, where the official day for honouring fallen military is ANZAC day 25th April
This post was made on November 9 about nov. 11, weird
Whether or not the date is suitable is an irrelevant and time wasting debate that hides the real issue. What should be discussed instead is if the deceptive mechanisms used by this type of e-commerce should be considered as prowess, as the post mentions, or represents a rather bleak vision of the future of online consumerism. Looking at AliExpress for instance:
- ratings are not reliable: sellers constantly harass buyers to give them the highest rank, or provide extra goods/services or simply proper support in exchange for a better score;
- the products sold there are often the same quality of what ends up in one-dollar-shops, including some blatant clones and counterfeit products disguised by clever wording;
- the dispute system favours heavily the seller by demanding the buyer all sorts of documents and proofs that often takes more time to provide than what the broken/undelivered/unfit product is worth.
A quick search online into consumer forums will reveal to anyone doubting the above the submerged part of this consumerism glorification iceberg.
Is it just me, but are the Ali* websites built by kids in the 90s? Even Ebay looks like an awesome feat of design engineering next to the Ali sites.
Anything with a arab name is something I am not going to support in any way.
Alibaba owns AliExpress.com So, what is AliExpress.com?
In 20 years of internet buying, Ive been ripped off once – on AliExpress.com. After discussing it with several Chinese colleagues, each said basically the same thing: "Yeah, if you don't speak Mandarin, you're going to get ripped off there."
People go shopping on Veteran's day? Shopping can take a break. I go out and thank our veterans for their service. In fact, tomorrow I'm planning to go to a concert dedicated to the local veterans.
I never heard of China's Alibaba Group anyways.
I'm okay with this. By virtue of being a buncha zeroes and ones, the web itself is a hub of varying chaos, depending on how far you get from the well-lit surface. The only reason they play nice up there is reputation. Mind, it's an important reason. ebay needs to be considered reputable, and it's good for such a place to exist.
I'm okay letting shadier places exist too, where the more careful and competent will tread. They know there's risk, they go at their own peril. They do things their way down there. They mind their own business.
Until they start dragging in naive surface dwellers. Then I'm not so okay.
http://www.alibaba.com/product...
"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed. (William Gibson)"
What a revolution for global education (similar to the OLPC hope)!
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.