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Magic

getmagicnow.com

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Re: Magic

#331

Post by UVB-76 »

scrollaway wrote: post #310
everyone wrote: post #307

Does no one else consider the idea of this horribly decadent? They give as an example, ordering a delivery pizza for you, which is already a decadent activity and something you can accomplish with a single phone call anyway. Maybe for the rich high-flying silicon valley types, your time and brain space is so valuable that this service makes sense. But if that is the case maybe you should re-examine your lives.

This isn't interesting because of pizzas. This is interesting because of the potential to centralize and offload all decisions of a certain type. It's like a pay-per-use secretary. What I do find.. "decadent"... is people like you, judging masses of other people on the basis of what they find interesting or useful. Especially when you can't see past the low hanging fruit and aren't able to grasp any potential a servi…

A service like this simply isn't economical for the overwhelming majority of people.

If you perceive your time to be so valuable that you can't bear the five minutes it takes to order a pizza online or by phone, you probably should re-examine that valuation.

Especially when five minutes ordering exactly what you want directly from your preferred supplier is replaced by a fifteen minute exchange with a stranger who has to interprets vague inputs, has misaligned incentives, doesn't know any of your preferences beyond those you expressly state, etc. all of which you then pay a premium for...

Re: Magic

#332

Post by andrewfong »

danellis wrote: post #212
zaroth wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of course! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Privacy_Protection_Act

Interesting. I'm not sure I understand how California can make laws regulating companies in any part of the world.

There is fairly length set of rules and case law governing all of this. The short version is that if your company is engaged in business with Californians, there's a decent chance that California law applies to you. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_contacts

This isn't entirely unique to California by the way (although California is notable for reaching further than other U.S. states). For instance, there's a famous case (or series of cases) concerning the application of French law to Yahoo with respect to activity taking place on U.S. servers but accessible to French users. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LICRA_v._Yahoo!

On a practical level, if you're worried about California law, you should consider if you have any people or resources located in California. Or in the U.S. generally. Or if you plan to expand to California at some point. It's one thing to break California law. It's another to have any assets that California can go after.

Re: Magic

#333

Post by karmacondon »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #41

I can already order pizza and flowers and plane tickets myself. However, if you could handle requests like: Call Comcast for me and have them configure my Cisco DPC3939B for bridge mode Go stand in line at the post office and retrieve my package with tracking #xxxxxxxx My iPhone's screen is cracked. Take it to the mall and get somebody to fix or replace it, whichever's cheaper. Bring me some Mongolian BBQ with the fo…

As I understand it, this is what TaskRabbit and several other services offer right now. If this is something that you do on a regular basis, you might have enough disposable income to hire a full time personal assistant. Or pool money with other well off friends and split an assistant's time.

Obviously the concept of concierge service isn't new. But getmagicnow.com is based on a brilliant insight: "people don't want to sign up for TaskRabbit or any other website, they just want to text a number". All the details of scaling the service and how it will work out can left for later. Right now they should be patting themselves on the back until their arms get tired.

Re: Magic

#334

Post by rmc »

danellis wrote: post #212
zaroth wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of course! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Privacy_Protection_Act

Interesting. I'm not sure I understand how California can make laws regulating companies in any part of the world.

Doesn't stop them trying.

Re: Magic

#335

Post by morganvachon »

ulfw wrote: post #283
exogen wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure! http://brianbeck.com/images/magic-times.png The first couple responses were pretty slow, sounds like they were getting absolutely hammered with requests. I could have done it a lot faster myself for sure, seems promising though!

One and a half hours to order something (plus delivery time - which they set would be another hour!) for 33$. Wow.

Given their explosion in requests around this time, I'm not fazed by it. Try the same request a month from now...if it's the same turnaround time, then I'd be worried that the company can't handle the volume long-term. Which would be a shame, this seems really useful.

Re: Magic

#336

Post by lifeisstillgood »

Siecje wrote: post #263
cmikec wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Yeah, honestly, after deciding to launch this we released a really minimal landing page which I saved here: http://getmagicnow.com/index-old.html - As you can see I made that in about 20 minutes, and was not expecting this. After someone posted it on Product Hunt I spent whatever time I could polishing it up. In general though, I agree, simple websites are much better. Thanks for the kind words.

One thing is that it says chatting is free and there are no hidden fees. It doesn't say how much extra it is costing.

Tip is included.

I suspect just like the concierge at a hotel, the cut comes from the provider of the service (a dozen roses for 100 bucks - they can afford some affiliate fees from that)

Re: Magic

#337

Post by everyone »

jamesrcole wrote: post #317
everyone wrote: post #307

Does no one else consider the idea of this horribly decadent? They give as an example, ordering a delivery pizza for you, which is already a decadent activity and something you can accomplish with a single phone call anyway. Maybe for the rich high-flying silicon valley types, your time and brain space is so valuable that this service makes sense. But if that is the case maybe you should re-examine your lives.

I don't see it as horribly decadent. At least not in any obvious sense. Anything that is more convenient than things were previously can be seen as decadent. I suspect so much that everyone takes for granted today would have seemed decadent to people 50 or 100 years ago. Maybe there's a number of people that such a service would really help out? I don't know, but single parents are one group that comes to mind. For h…

Well put. I had a long chaotic reply discussing why maybe living as we did 100 years ago (or more) might be a good idea, but, this is not really the place for that. Maybe I'll write a book the subject!

Re: Magic

#338

Post by scrollaway »

UVB-76 wrote: post #331
scrollaway wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't interesting because of pizzas. This is interesting because of the potential to centralize and offload all decisions of a certain type. It's like a pay-per-use secretary. What I do find.. "decadent"... is people like you, judging masses of other people on the basis of what they find interesting or useful. Especially when you can't see past the low hanging fruit and aren't able to grasp any potential a servi…

A service like this simply isn't economical for the overwhelming majority of people. If you perceive your time to be so valuable that you can't bear the five minutes it takes to order a pizza online or by phone, you probably should re-examine that valuation. Especially when five minutes ordering exactly what you want directly from your preferred supplier is replaced by a fifteen minute exchange with a stranger who ha…

Well done, you missed the point as much as OP. You're still stuck on pizzas.

I wonder why you're replying to me; you're specifically bringing up points which my post explains are unimportant.

Re: Magic

#339

Post by MichaelGG »

prawn wrote: post #318
MichaelGG wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What?? No, not sarcasm at all, I'm dead serious. Often I'm just on my phone at night, no tablet/laptop. So say I want to get some food. I've got to go find the damn website. Remember a login maybe. Or deal with some JS-laden thing that doesn't render smoothly on my 6" Android. Sort all that shit out. Wonder if I have cash for a tip, cause I feel obligated most times. Or calling. I gotta actually dial, talk to someone…

Agree generally, but I do wonder why in 2015 this has to be driven manually by humans. I understand we're flexible decision makers, but we're also a significant cost in these sorts of processes. I can appreciate this definitely follows the "do things that don't scale" line. If there was a standard by which browsers stored payment and delivery details, a little beefed up from what we have now, would that get us part w…

>If there was a standard by which browsers stored payment and delivery details, a little beefed up from what we have now, would that get us part way?

Isn't that basically the idea of PayPal or Amazon Payments and similar things?

Re: Magic

#340

Post by chenster »

Fewer peeople are using SMS today. In US, WhatsApp is preferred text message app; In Japan and Taiwan, everyone uses Line while rest of Asia uses WeChat. Any plan to support those Apps?
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