New post on the bee log

Freaking Out About the New Economy
Posted by Dave Balter
June 9th, 2008
So what does “Commence Freaking Out” actually mean?

It means that dozens of BzzAgent staffers are going to have to work double time, overtime, stress time and weekend time to pull together the last pieces of our new rewards and ranking/tiering platform.

It means that our website was down for more than 9 hours while we made all of the changes that took 12 months to plan, configure, and test (we always wish we had more time for more testing).

It means hundreds of thousands of BzzAgents will pour into the website within hours to try out the new platform. We’ll be on pins and needles, hoping you like it as much as we think you will. There will be thousands of customer service calls. Tens of thousands of new word of mouth reports. Points exchange questions. Points redemption questions. Questions about status. Questions about questions.

It means our engineering team can’t rest just yet. We’ll find some bugs. Things won’t work exactly 100% perfectly. The site may struggle to handle the load of all of the traffic. Everyone will be on call.

It means we’ll be working diligently with dozens of partners like MyPoints, Wolfgang’s Music Archive, Origins, Rue La La, TrueJeans (to name just a few) to ensure they’re happy. We’ve spent hundreds of hours working on the relationship with all of these companies, and they’ll need love and support. Are they getting enough interest from Agents, is data being tied appropriately between the companies, are our accounting departments getting along?

It means the processes we used to have: the FAQs, the way we handle fulfillment, the materials we develop for clients, will all be changed.

We stripped away everything we previously knew and built from the ground up. We did a do-over. For a 6 year old company, that is perhaps one of the most difficult things to accomplish. We asked ourselves: if we were starting the business today, with all of the knowledge and expertise we now have, with 420,000 Agents who care., how would we make it work?

It means that everything old is new once again.

That’s worth freaking out about.

So let’s look forward: what exactly is this “new economy” we speak of? Imagine the BzzAgent platform as a car. While this car is cruising at 100 MPH down the highway, we decided to remove the engine so we could replace it with a brand, shiny new one (this one is a hybrid, of course) that will allow us to drive faster and safer for the next million miles.

It took a year to prepare for this engine switch, which is happening as we speak. As you’ve now witnessed, we spent the last two weeks allowing Agents with BzzPoints to transfer them into something of value (the removal of the old engine). With the transfer complete, we are now putting the new engine in place. We’ve added new types of thank yous (Womlets) and the ability to have points redeemable for unlimited inventory at hundreds of retailers. We’ve made ranking and tiering significantly more intuitive and beneficial to active Agents.

So, we ask that you spend some time getting to know this new engine, this new economy. Compared to the old economy, things are different. But they’re different for a reason: You. And we hope you enjoy what we’ve built.

So, come along with us. Let’s collectively turn the key to get this engine revving.

I was just going to post this. All the replies thetr so far are pretty much that they like it. Let's not post our negative stuff there and start another BeeLog fight please. I am sure the hive will come and see what we say here. Let's just please keep the peace in the BeeLog.

I just read the replies. Guess I'm one of the few that are not impressed w/getting 55 MAX mypoints for a report.. as well as only being able to fill a honeycomb a month...or the fact that there is really no difference in submitting 2 reports or 20... that if a person needs 5 combs to go up a tier..that will take 5 months.

To each thier own. I'm happy for those that are happy.. I'm not happy.