Aprizi appeared in The New York Times today, in an article on privacy and innovation for consumers. In my quote, I tried to emphasize that this is about an honorable agreement with the customer, not some kind of bait and switch. There is a new wave of startups where everything is above-board and totally opt-in. As a consumer myself, I much prefer this to the murky world of data co-ops where retailers track and share data behind my back both online and offline. (I’ve written about respecting the consumer before)
I’ve got a long post brewing on the last several weeks of Aprizi’s open beta. We made a decision to prioritize discovery of interesting products and stores, rather than deals.
Our “customer development” efforts have very much affected our design decisions and immediate priorities. We saw so much delight on people’s faces when it came to discovery (both of products and stores), and it fit well with our early focus on curation and personalization. An interesting quote I keep hearing variations of: “This [discovery] is so [fantastic] — I *never* could have found it through Google or Amazon!”
But for all that we have rapidly and considerably evolved over the last 6 months, our long term vision has remained remarkably consistent, as has our target customer base. So much to do!