Live data from Hacker News

Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

techcrunch.com

241–250 of 333 posts

Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#241
"Discontinue" has gotta be one of the best (worst?) corporate-speak BS terms of late. I'm genuinely surprised to see an outlet like TechCrunch using the term when not directly quoting someone — I mean, who are they trying to protect here? "Walmart says it will /(shutter|shut down|sunset|retire|axe|kill)/ Jet" would be truer to their spirit, IMO.

Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#242

As a former Jet employee, this makes me pretty sad. I took the job at Jet because I wanted to learn more about F#, coming from a Haskell background, and I was happy to find that my coworkers were all really smart people and the codebase, while far from perfect, was written using functional concepts, and avoided the "writing C# in F#" trap. I left Jet partly because there had been talks of absorbing Jet into Walmart,…

[deleted]

Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh you named 2 stronger international brands. Obviously jet.com should have been kept then. Way to completely miss the forest for the trees.

Sorry I didn't want to upset you.

I'm not upset, I'm just absolutely baffled that there's such disagreement with the idea that you can be one of the best in the world at something without doing it all over the world.

Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#244
post #204

I now trust Walmart [jet.com] and Bestbuy more than Amazon. Walmart / Jet have made great strides in their online experience and I trust them more than Amazon now. I don't really care about the branding Jet or Walmart is fine. And for my rant/last straw with Amazon: My most recent Amazon frustration: I ordered a Ryzen processor "shipped and sold by Amazon" and got an opened and obviously installed processor. Pins wer…

Amazon's current solution also includes shutting down your account, even if it's prime, and telling you to fuck off because you returned too many of its fake or garbage products.

So what happens when you've basically stored your digital life on Amazon's accounts, many times with purchases from their own site?

I've got tons of music - mp3 songs and albums, hundreds of both purchased Kindle books and uploaded personal ones, Audible audio books, years worth of pictures that was part of some hardware deal, etc?

Its even worse than the problem of Google just shutting down your account since most of these victims weren't paying for anything.

Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IKEA.

I could name a hundred niche sellers too, but the allure of Walmart and Amazon is that they sell basically everything. I can buy a Macbook and Gatorade plus some brand name AA batteries for my RC car that I bought all in the same shopping trip. IKEA has good products but they don't come close to general merchandise stores like Amazon or Walmart.

What about Costco?

Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#246
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with you on walmart for awhile but now they're doing the same marketplace bullshit that amazon is doing and all expectations of quality and authenticity are lost again. If I want something used I'll go to ebay and if I want something drop-shipped from china I can go to aliexpress myself. So now I'm using Target.com whenever possible. It's often cheaper than amazon anyway. I actually started using walmart.com ov…

The marketplace is the reason I don’t use Walmart. The marketplace and commingled stock is Amazon’s biggest problem and Walmart appears to be playing catch-up rather than forging their own path. We don’t need another Amazon. I’ve been using Target, eBay, Best Buy and random sites lately. The Target experience is great even if they don’t have the same selection Amazon does.

> The Target experience is great even if they don’t have the same selection Amazon does.

Sometimes this is nice. If I'm buying paper towels, I don't need to be overwhelmed with 800 options.

Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#247
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

see also: buy.com -> rakuten // no amount of branding awareness tv ads are fixing the name recognition they lost with that one... still redirects though.

They're a pretty strong brand in their home country of Japan and I guess they'd rather be known as Rakuten worldwide rather than different names in different countries.

Yep, Kobo is now "Rakuten Kobo". I haven't yet seen this on OverDrive, which they also own. To my ear, the names don't go together quite as well, since one sounds very American/English, and the other sounds very non-English (and Americans seem to have difficulty figuring out how to pronounce it).

Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions (billions?) trust Facebook too. Yet, Facebook kept the Instagram brand and it paid off.

Facebook keeps Instagram (and Whatsapp) as a form of market segmentation. Just like how Proctor & Gamble sells eleven (!) different brands of laundry detergent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Procter_%26_Gamble_bra... Presumably they capture more of the overall market for detergent that way. Maybe the same mechanisms do not apply to retail in general.

Yeah, it was explained to me once by a bid for shelf space. If there are 2 brands, a new one gets 1/3rd of the space, if there are 15, then a new one gets 1/16.

Therefore making P&G more money.

Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#249
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions (billions?) trust Facebook too. Yet, Facebook kept the Instagram brand and it paid off.

At the time of acquisition, I think the Instagram brand was more popular and recognized among users than Jet.com. Jet.com didn't become a phenomenon before Walmart acquired it. Instagram was already extremely popular when FB bought it.

Instagram had like less than 20mn users when FB acquired it.

If you peruse the HN comments from the time, many of them were convinced that this was a waste of money (though not the top comment, interestingly enough): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840

Re: Walmart says it will discontinue Jet

#250
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed the same pattern. Presumably they would rather lose business in the short term (by scaring away time-sensitive shoppers) than risk damage to the brand by delivering late.

Considering that at least 5 Amazon employees have died, I would have a hard time crying about a late package right now. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/14/sixth-confirmed-amazon-worke...

Amazon has over 800,000 employees. 1/100,000 is not a high rate compared to general population.

(Not trivializing deaths.)

Post reply on HN