Ideas

you may want to consider changing the title to something a little less suggestive?! :-) Spot light special etc?

hmmm yes - i just visited redlightspecial.com and worked out what you mean!!!

As long as the deals beat all prices in a a shopping search engine, it think it is pretty cool. There are a lot of good-deal-seeking nutjobs out there.

I like this more the more I think about it. But, I would not just let the merchants be the ones to submit their deals. Merchants are the enemy! And stores like officemax and bestbuy just aren't going to participate since oftentimes their deals are just tricks to get people to come into their stores and buy other stuff. I would encourage shopping junkies (the people who visit all the deal sites like fatwallet, slickdeals, spoofee, gotapex, ben's, anandtech, passwird, etc) to become agents for us. Whenever one of our agents comes across a killer deal they submit it to spotlight, they earn a portion of any affiliate revenue, and their screenname is displayed as the agent who discovered the deal. It can bring a bit of fame to deal finding wizards.

HI Motiggidy
I like your take on the concept. I would worry that there would be too many people submitting "special deals" and it might get a bit crowded, although I am sure there are ways around this. Another take would be to target smaller businesses who do not have a strong online presence or online merchant facilities. They could essentially use spot-light special to attract attention to their existing stock lines without needing an online store. It would be a simple way for some small businesses to dabble in online sales.

I have no problem with stores submitting, but remember they are kind of with a conflict of interest regarding the price they offer.

Also, your target market here with this I see as people who already use other online deal finding methods so they know a good deal when they see it. If the deals presented aren't up to snuff, they'll uninstall pretty quick. Small stores usually, though not always, don't have the ability to undercut a big one in price.

With agent submitted deals if they suck then they will lose reputation. Also, the deals could be easily ranked by all users when a spotlight special is sent out. Also, they agent will earn more if the deals are killer.

A very cool variation on the Woot.com model (which I love). This application could facilitate the sale of of products by vendors without requiring CH to make a significant brick and mortar investment.

If you could make it generic, so you could sell the extension to different online shops (like the searchbar in Firefox that is connected to different search engines) it could make some good money. So I like it.

Small detail. Red light, makes me think of 'the red light district'. Google it if you don't know what that is.. :D, also red is a bit negative, so I'd go for a green light. But like I said, I like the idea.

I'm not sure how this is any different than Woot. It's essentially Woot applied to an extension in firefox no?

Canchita, Woot does product acquisition, sales, and shipping as far as I know. This idea does none of that.

Psychsplash- I like the concept but my question echoes canchita's concern and is more an issue with its defensibility: it seems very much like the woot.com concept only using a desktop widget for notification. With their momentum and existing user base it would be trivial for them to create a dashboard widget for Mac and an systray icon for PC to expose their existing offering via that method. From the CH perspective, building the relationships w/ merchants plus all the code and technical infrastructure to pull it off, it just seems like it's a way tougher challenge and a risky proposition seeing that Woot could execute immediately with little development required... That being said, it IS a cool idea and something that would no doubt be popular.

Crap, i didn't want to have to go head to head w/ you in this tourney ;-)

sean

I like this, sort of.
maybe the users should subscribe to certain types of products.

My take on the whole "Woot comparison"
1) spotlight has the ability to offer multiple items per day.
2) Spotlight highlights deals for existing merchants - they handle the stock, we provide the online payment option
3) Yes woot could launch a firefox extension but they havent though of it yet.
4) Spotlight adds a fun element to online shopping - the alert system. this alert system could go on to be used in multiple different CH products - "the CH flashing light" - tells you something really important is happening in your favourite CH product.
5) I intend spotlight to extend to all sorts of products, not limited to electronic goods.
6) spotlight could be an addition to "Spoil my spouse" and alert members to cool bargains available as gifts (e.g., special on perfumes).
7) Fundamentally, I hope spotlight provides an e-commerce option to multiple different merchants.
8) Id like to see some options built into spotlight that allow me to alert my friends (who might not have the spotlight installed or who are using IE). This might be a simple email alert or even better an SMS alert.
9) it would be possible to put special dates into the spotlight (e.g, partner's birthdays) and have the spotlight work overtime in the days leading up to these dates.
10) ultimately, spotlight may be able to search existing shopping engines for keywords that I enter.

These are just a few ideas that I hope separate spotlight from woot and perhaps add new elements to the existing idea. This is a service I would use (but i also have a rather overcrowded firefox!!!)

Thanks heaps to those who have voted. I really appreciate the opportunity to get into the top 4.

Scrollinondubs: - it was me that was petrified going up against your idea!!

So, PsychSplash, your comment about Woot only offering one item per day makes me think you've never seen one of Woot's crazy "orange light days" or whatever, where they basically sell off every item they still have in stock from previous days. The next item is only displayed when the current one sells out. It's instanely popular, and I think that's exactly why Spot Light Special would be a huge hit!

This harnesses the true power of "Impulse buy" and lets sellers get rid of unwanted stock more easily.

This would be nice if you could specify categories of products you're looking for or even specific attributes like "10 megapixel digital camera". That would keep the flashing down to a minimum. I could see this being addictive!

Idealogue: - specifying types of products would be awesome, kinda like putting filter terms in an RSS reader. I was thinking also that you could click a "more like this" button and this would register a vote for a particular type of item. This could help CH determine the most popular items.

I second the motion that having users able to specify their preferences for offers has great potential.
When I am in the market for something, I research the product and then when I've decided I want it, I try to find the best reasonable price.
If I get the chance to say I want product X or something like it and then have a great offer pop up on my browser then you've not only saved me money, but a great deal of time searching around too. The potential convenience of this idea is awesome.

Localization could be good -- maps, routes, etc.

this is kind of like Kmarts blue light specials