Woot is an Internet retailer based in the Dallas suburb of Carrollton, Texas. It was founded by electronics wholesaler Matt Rutledge and debuted on July 12, 2004. Woot is believed to have pioneered the "One deal a day" business model. Woot offers one discounted product each day on its web site, woot.com. The product is available for 24 hours; it "expires" at midnight (US Central time) and is replaced by a different product for the next day.
Woot has a community of customers who share their opinions on the site’s forums. Products vary but tend to emphasize computer components and electronic gadgets.
Woot takes its name from the widely-used online interjection “w00t!”. Each product sold is referred to as the "woot."
Special events at Woot.com
Woot-Off
The site will occasionally deviate from the one-product-per-day model for a “Woot-Off”, where a succession of products are available for a period of unannounced length, usually 24-72 hours. This mode is indicated by rotating lights and a bar indicating the usually unknowable amount of product remaining.
Since the next item in the Woot-Off will not be listed until the current item is sold out, posters in Woot's forums occasionally use peer pressure to advocate the purchase of the current item. This selling of an item that few people actually want is called a "wootatrocity" or "Woot-Off Killer". Often members will boast of buying the current item just to advance the Woot-Off.
During an average two day Woot-off, Woot's sales can exceed one million dollars.
Bag O' Crap
In lieu of typical product sales, Woot occasionally offers a blind grab bag called “Bag O’ Crap” (“BOC”). This includes dollar store items and may also randomly include more expensive electronics items. Customers may buy up to three bags for $1.00 each, as in the usual model, or on some occasions may only buy one $1.00 bag that comes with three bags' worth of gear. Customers are urged to purchase in quantities of three to minimize the percentage cost of shipping and maximize the probability of getting something of greater value. The "BOC" typically sells out within minutes of furious ordering, overloading the woot.com servers in the process as potential buyers frantically try to reload the ordering pages. This is considered to be part of the fun by most Woot forum members, but leaves many people angry and frustrated.
Officially, the Bag O' Crap is sold under the title of "Random Crap."
Since "BOCs" are often referenced in the Woot forums, Woot's forum software filters the text to spell out tongue-in-cheek phrases with the same initials, such as "Blinged-out cabbage", "Braille on Cookies", "Bandolier of Carrots", and others.
On April 1, 2007 as an April Fools Joke, the Bag O' Crap was offered for the price of $1,000,001.00 with the regular price of $5.00 for shipping. A coupon code ("please") was discovered in the product image and utilized by Woot users to receive a $1,000,000 discount on the BOC, thus reducing the price to the standard one dollar.
2-for-Tuesday
Since January 10, 2006, Woot has offered two-packs of products every Tuesday. These products have ranged from TV games to keyboard and mouse combos to toasters. A customer can purchase up to three two-packs, for a total of six items bought.
On February 6, 2007, Woot ran a new 'X-for-Tuesday' in which it offered 10 Kensington Keyboards (which ship in a box of 10). On April 17, 2007, Woot ran a new '4-for-Fuesday' in which it offered 4 Delphi USB 2.0 Lighted Cables. Both appear to have been one-time occurrences, with a normal two-pack offered on each following Tuesday.
[source: Wikipedia]
