Thalasar Ventures

Sometimes your best researcher is one of your competitors, usually a much better funded competitor. Sometimes however you just scratch your head and wonder. I got this email from the guys that run mytriggers.com yesterday.

We are pleased to announce the launch of our new consumer focused Comparison Shopping website ShopBIG.com.
ShopBIG is powered by the latest version of the same powerful search engine behind myTriggers.com, with a streamlined user experience and even better search results. ShopBIG still contains your favorite features like alerts and the ability to search auction sites, along with new capabilities such as a tax & shipping calculator, popular item previews, reviews, product specifications and much more. In addition to Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Best Buy, Home Depot, and 1 million other merchants and sellers we have recently added CD Universe, Target, GNC, FAO Schwartz, Liz Claiborne, B&H Photo, Ace Hardware, DKNY and more in our effort to include every store online….
If you enjoyed shopping at myTriggers.com, get ready to love shopping online a whole lot more. ShopBIG is your new portal to BIG Selection and BIG Savings!

I visited shopbig.com – it’s mytriggers.com with a different skin and NO triggers. I can only assume that mytriggers.com found out a couple of things. First off the name mytriggers.com has absolutely no branding relationship to what the site does. With a name like mytriggers.com, you almost assume the site is selling customized gun triggers.
Secondly Glen over there has done this repeatedly. He seems to launch new sites on a whim, throwing a new skin on the mytriggers.com and throwing them out there. His email closes with

“If you are looking for the hottest gifts, remember to also visit:
www.shopforelmo.com
www.findplaystation.com
www.shopforwii.com

Glenn launched these sites during Christmas and judging by their Page Rank (2 on every site) and then the very high Alexa numbers (Shopforelmo.com Alexa Rank – 2,363,264, findplaystation.com Alexa Rank – 1,989,696 and the best site shopforwii.com Alexa Rank – 424,407). These number mean that perhaps collectively 150 people hit these sites a day. I am still confused why Glenn launched these sites. Those were temporary glitches in the channel. If people want a PS3 or a Nintendo Wii, they can get them at Best Buy. Furthermore why not direct them to a co-branded store at mytriggers.com? It makes no sense to smear your branding efforts like too little butter spread over too much bread. Throwing an new website that appear to be identical to every single comparison engine based on shopping.com or any of the various free scripts for loading product databases with absolutely no differentiation (and as far as I can very little to offer) isn’t the way to grow your business.
Thirdly since Glenn is launching this site without the triggers functionality, I can only assume that he discovered like I did that most people have trouble setting up a trigger. I have been working on this problem and I have found a solution. (Sorry not gonna post it here. You just got to wait and see). However instead of solving the problem of making triggers more social and more intuitive, Glenn took them out. That’s one solution but now there is absolutely nothing to differentiate this site from literally thousands on the net.