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Magic+

getmagicnow.com

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Re: Magic+

#351

Post by argonaut »

rtpg wrote: post #214
seanlinehan wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to automate the parsing of queries to produce leverage here. Every time they answer a query successfully, I would imagine they add that to an internal repository of information. So the technology play would be less on the "figure out what they want" front and more on the "deliver exactly what they want" front. Need an on demand helicopter in NYC? Great, Magic knows just who to call for that because the…

that isn't technology though, you just might use technology to keep track of it (wiki/whatever). Maybe that's what paul meant by "technology" but that isn't a Tesla play by any stretch of the imagination.

An internal logistics dashboard and automation pipeline is absolutely technology, and it's absolutely a competitive advantage.

Re: Magic+

#352

Post by nlh »

I'm trying to figure out why I (too) am having a strong negative reaction to this. Let me think out loud:

I'm fortunate enough to have a real personal assistant. She's amazing, she knows me, she does fantastic work, and I pay her a fair and reasonable wage (including health care) that's far less than $100/hour. So let's put me in the category of "people who can afford a personal assistant" but not quite in the category of "people who demand to meet Tina Fey & Amy Poehler on demand."

I would NEVER in a million years consider replacing my assistant with a faceless nameless AI-assisted service. I have a number of friends who are also fortunate enough to have assistants. They would NEVER consider replacing their assistants with a faceless nameless AI-assisted service (at least one friend has an assistant that's been with him for years and is basically part of the family).

And with the examples they give, Magic+ is painting a picture of both a service and user that's highly specific -- wealthy enough to afford these luxuries, but not willing to make the investment of hiring a real person to build a real relationship with to perform these tasks.

So the whole thing feels....dismissive. I guess that's the best word I can come up with. Dismissive of money ("Entertain me with Tina Fey - I will pay for her presence."), dismissive of human contact ("I don't want a real assistant - I just want to text a service to do my bidding.") Dismissive of warmth. It's sort of what I imagine a caricature of a dystopian tech billionaire would want -- all of the somethings with none of the someones.

I dunno. It just feels ... off. Sorry I can't come up with something better. But as the target demographic (I think?), I'm feeling like the pitch is very off-target and off-putting.

Re: Magic+

#353

Post by BookmarkSaver »

Ok. I must seriously be missing something here. I'm usually the last person to complain about shilling, because even on the very rare occasions that I am confident that some sort of "astroturf" operation is going on I usually find it to be a somewhat valid or at least entertaining form of promotion and don't care that it is clearly just advertising.

But seriously, this thread is absurd. I truly do not understand how a significant portion of this site (even knowing that it is probably largely made up of affluent, educated people) consider this to be even a reasonable value proposition. I'm not incredibly affluent or anything, but by any standard short of the true "1%" I am extremely well off. However the level of wealth required that a blind commitment of $100/hr for trivial delagatable tasks is way beyond anything I would consider using, especially considering the significant upfront purchase that seems to be required. What ten hours of random bullshit that I not just need done, but would entrust to a stranger without known qualifications is worth $1k? Not much...

But this comment section is filled with well crafted top level praise of the service with a staggering amount of popularity for what seems to be an extreme luxury service. Compounded by very "reasonable" objections with immediate and solicitous responses by accounts claiming to be representatives humbly begging for an opportunity to right their wrongs and improve the service.

This whole thing looks like a finely tuned campaign to leverage highly-regarded social media in a wide scale blitz to make the absurd product seem reasonable. Seriously, I'm staggered at this comment section and the popularity here.

And this "target market" excuse seems like crap. If the "target market" is extremely rich folk who would consider dropping $100/hr on miscellaneous unskilled labor with almost no real guarantee of reliability or quality, then they wouldn't be blitzing a random social media site to improve their image (which they explicitly are doing with mr. cmikec running around). They'd focus their efforts on true premium clients and demonstrate some sort of solid guarantee of their reliability that a suspicious rich person might actually accept. This whole thing looks like an attempt to make random $100/hr requests somehow seem reasonable to people who can technically afford it but typically wouldn't even consider it if they didn't see it as a "normalish" thing to do.

Re: Magic+

#354

Post by nl »

cdata wrote: post #143
joslin01 wrote: post #34

Looks like the reception isn't doing too well. I remember when Magic launched here on HN and it BLEW up. I was one of the people who tried it out. I live in NYC and actually had a poor experience. The first two times, I said "hey I want a sandwich with [x]" and I got it but it took a lot longer than if I just clicked the necessary buttons on Seamless. Then I kept getting random calls from time to time from pizza deli…

I had a very similar outcome with Magic after trying really hard to rely on it. One of their suggested usages is to order flowers for someone, so I tried that on two different occasions. The first time around, I asked for flowers, and got a picture of some flowers that they could send to my recipient. I didn't like the flowers in the picture, and so they picked another set of flowers per some feedback from me. The fl…

If it's any consolation, I once had a flower company deliver an empty box to someone's office. That was pretty embarrassing!

Re: Magic+

#355

Post by [deleted] »

omarish wrote: post #147

Based on everything I learned about this space from starting, operating, and later selling a company that does exactly this in the summer of 2014 [1] [2], I'm bullish on this idea. I think it's definitely a step in the right direction and incentives are starting to line up. The "I'll do anything for you by SMS" space (I call it the "Houdini app" space) space affords the middle-to-upper class in first world countries…

[deleted]

Re: Magic+

#356

Post by BillFixers »

tpg wrote: post #338
BillFixers wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's us! I don't want to do a sales pitch or any thing, but if I can answer any questions about the service (or Comcast or whoever), feel free to ask away! (also our hosting isn't handling the traffic super well, so if you have any trouble visiting the site, but want to sign up or have questions, feel free to shoot me an email personally at ben@billfixers.com

have you considered a B2B offering? I'd love to have somebody do what you do but with the software / hardware vendors that I deal with at work.

We've been experimenting with it, and have worked with a few dozen businesses thus far (mostly in familiar territory like cable, phone, and cell, but also some SaaS expenses, shipping/parcel costs, etc.). Feel free to email me at ben@billfixers.com if you'd like us to look into your particular vendors!

Re: Magic+

#357

Post by negamax »

If you can establish a business around this, that would be great. But personal assistants are more than just money and skills. There's lots of trust involved created over the years. I think people would be more comfortable if this was completely AIed (may be it can be promoted as that in a sly way) as compared to sending task requests to unknown (although trained) people. But that's just me. I really do think that this is bad example of technology. But looking at the examples, it may just be the thing nouveau riche are looking for.

Re: Magic+

#358

Post by cthalupa »

BookmarkSaver wrote: post #350
joslin01 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a middle class person struggling to get day by day -- yes, yes it is.

Bullshit. I'm not "rich", but I'm a single guy making an great salary and my purchasing power is probably in the 95% of the the US. I don't even really think twice about purchases of anything that costs less than 3 digits if I have any desire for it. But $300 dollars for a meal as a gift to a friend? And not even that great of a meal? The fuck? That is absurd. I wouldn't even be above buying someone an xbox if I felt…

He used regular Magic, which is not Magic+. Magic is significantly cheaper. (Drop the plus from the URL). You submit a request, they give you the total, you confirm it, that's what you're charged.

I wouldn't consider myself rich either, but I do fairly well for myself as an unmarried guy in his 20s, and there are some friends that in some situations I wouldn't hesitate at all to spend a few hundred dollars on them. Some of them have done the same for me.

If you don't think twice about buying things under three digits, depending on frequency, just not doing that for frivolous things for a few weeks could afford you the ability to do something that might ultimately be a much more valuable memory. There's plenty of crap I've bought and barely used that would have been much better used taking a good friend out to an extravagant meal or event.

Re: Magic+

#359

Post by cthalupa »

FireBeyond wrote: post #296
mbrameld wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't need an extravagant income to do something like that. I just did a quick check and it costs less than $150 to overnight an 8lb package from NY to SF with 8am delivery. So the markup over just buying the meal at the restaurant is going to be less than $300 once you add refrigerated packaging and pay somebody to order it, pick it up, package it, and ship it. That's pricey if you're doing it every week, but…

Less than $150 from whom? UPS and FedEx quoted me $275-300. I don't know many lower-middle class people who'd buy what will likely end up being just shy of a thousand dollar present for their friends.

Do you do a lot of business shipping with them?

Shipping rates are significantly reduced if you do high volume - if Magic does a lot of shipping (and it sounds like they would, with the services they offer), they could probably negotiate a far lower rate than you could.

Re: Magic+

#360

Post by option_greek »

There is so much on envy (masked as cynicism) in the comment section that we might as well paint the HN banner green today.

PS: Before you downvote me to death, want to clarify that the envy is that someone can use this service paying 100/hr :)

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