[HN Gopher] Black Friday/Cyber Monday Live Map
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Black Friday/Cyber Monday Live Map
Author : badcc
Score : 377 points
Date : 2021-11-26 01:53 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (datastories.shopify.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (datastories.shopify.com)
| nathanvanfleet wrote:
| I'll never respect Shopify. I gave them my CV with decent
| experience and the recruiter never even spoke to me on the phone.
| They told me that I would need more of a social media presence or
| maybe open-source work. It was completely baffling but I'm glad I
| never encountered another company like them.
| onion2k wrote:
| You don't mention what sort of role you applied for. If it was
| any kind of developer relations position then looking for
| someone with a recognised presence in the community isn't
| unreasonable. Even for an ordinary dev role, looking for
| someone who has demonstrated their ability to be sociable and
| work with other devs is _understandable_ even if it sucks.
|
| Plus you don't say when this was. Looking at social media
| profiles in job applications was a bit of a (silly) trend 5 or
| 6 years ago.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Very large org with no doubt limitless job applications being
| submitted are particularly picky with the ones they choose to
| interview? Colour me shocked.
| motoxpro wrote:
| I mean, sounds like they didn't think you were good enough for
| the job and gave you some nice tips on how to shortcut not
| having the required experience.
| boringg wrote:
| I'd agree the fact that they even gave you any feedback is a
| benefit - things that can improve your candidacy. Outside of
| knowing anything about your job application/experience - most
| places I know just don't get back to you and leave you
| wondering if you are still in the running or not.
| onion2k wrote:
| Judging by the globe there's a similar amount of traffic in the
| west coast US as there is in UK, which is a bit odd considering
| its 0715 here in the UK right now. I didn't know my neighbors got
| up to shop so early.
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| I was thinking the opposite- I'd expect all the traffic in the
| UK right now. Who is awake in the US!?!
| detaro wrote:
| it's before midnight on the west coast, why wouldn't people
| be awake?
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Check out your console some easter eggs. Pretty cool!!!
|
| Also that is a ton of data polled like every second. 68 deep
| array of objects. impressive would be cool to read about their
| backend
| Dave3of5 wrote:
| It's funny how it links to their jobs. I've applied to
| companies like this in the past the likelihood of you even
| receiving a reply is close to zero.
| matchagaucho wrote:
| Great tip! I wondered if the globe might be a looped animation,
| until I saw that easter egg. Impressive.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| I don't see anything impressive TBH. Looks like a simple list
| of order events from their message bus or something.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| yeah but at their scale... Google says they might use Kafka.
| So idk personally as a non expert in that I would totally
| read a blog post about generally how they put it together,
| what the scale of people accessing the live map is
| spodek wrote:
| Today is also Buy Nothing Day for those with different values.
|
| Our mainstream culture generally says growing the GDP helps
| everyone, that "a rising tide lifts all boats." Some of us see
| the evidence pointing the other way and avoiding needless
| shopping helping people more.
| neilv wrote:
| Is the name "BFCM" a dark humor nod to the ICBM-like
| visualization?
| adrr wrote:
| Standard abbreviation for Black Friday cyber Monday.
| salmiak wrote:
| This is a very clear illustration of the inequalities between the
| northern and southern hemisphere's.
| waschl wrote:
| I guess it's rather a clear illustration of shopify's
| international reach
| sverhagen wrote:
| ...or of how much or little "Black Friday" is a global thing.
| (It sure is being marketed in Europe now, even if my country-
| fellows in the Netherlands don't celebrate (American)
| Thanksgiving.)
| codetrotter wrote:
| Here in Norway the stores have been running Black Friday
| and Cyber Monday deals for years at least. And recently
| more and more of them have Black Week, which is like Black
| Friday but it lasts the whole week.
| boringg wrote:
| Its actually a signal to where there is market traction and
| where there isn't through regulators or competitors.
| noncequitur wrote:
| Genetics
| bathtub365 wrote:
| One of the biggest inequalities being that Black Friday and
| Cyber Monday are American inventions aligned with a holiday
| that doesn't exist in other countries.
| lofties wrote:
| I'm in South-East Asia/Japan and Black Friday/Cyber Monday is
| definitely a thing here, but Shopify isn't as prevelant here.
| All major eComm players are running BFCM campaigns.
| callahad wrote:
| Black Friday seems to be pretty widespread: many German
| retailers like https://www.galeria.de/ or
| https://www.mueller.de/ advertise "Black Shopping" today, and
| it seems common enough in the UK as well.
|
| Heck, some British retailers are even co-opting the 4th of
| July as a sales holiday for local businesses: "Independents'
| Day."
|
| Never underestimate the inexorable march of capitalism.
| [deleted]
| t0bia_s wrote:
| When envrionmanetal alarmist cancel Black Friday?
| [deleted]
| mrweasel wrote:
| Some stores already have and it was a debate on Danish radio
| yesterday.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| I'm sceptical about cancel culture and overall environmental
| alarming, but this should be debated more. It is pure
| consumerism.
| Omnipresent wrote:
| anyone know how that globe is made? which library ?
| dmalik wrote:
| Article on how it was made -
| https://shopify.engineering/bfcm-3d-data-visualization
| petarb wrote:
| ^ this post has a great overview. It's a custom built globe
| library built on top of Three.js
| Omnipresent wrote:
| looks like https://github.com/vasturiano/globe.gl
| high_byte wrote:
| towels down 35%? are people dirtier since lockdown? xD
|
| on serious note, pretty cool visualization!
| antihero wrote:
| Well you don't have to get up and go to the office.
| whatgoodisaroad wrote:
| Perhaps this is off topic, but it's always strange to see writing
| thousands of kilometers. If we're gonna use the meric system
| let's commit to it: either write megameters or millions of
| meters.
|
| It's a very cool visualization in any case.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| A lot of people really struggle with both large numbers and
| changes in units.
|
| Our current system is basically the social consensus of what is
| easiest.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The best part is it doesn't even matter. If you like
| megameters most, just put an imaginary . before the first 3
| digits.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Yes, a lot of people struggle with even that.
| [deleted]
| Rastonbury wrote:
| Why should there be consistency/commitment? Other than for the
| sake of itself? Genuinely curious where this desire for things
| being the way they 'should' be comes from
| listenallyall wrote:
| I think for large monetary units, newspapers and reporters
| should always use millions. Ask a guy off the street, what's
| larger, $500 million or $2 billion? I bet most get it wrong.
| That infrastructure bill that just passed? 1.2 million
| millions. How rich is Jeff Bezos? 200 thousand millions. The
| total US national debt? 29 million millions. Say it that way
| and it actually sounds like a large number.
| [deleted]
| amacneil wrote:
| Not strange at all. Kilometers is a unit of distance that we
| are familiar with.
|
| I have literally never heard the term "megameter" used in
| conversation and I'm pretty sure if you said it in any metric
| country you would get blank stares.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Communication is information transfer that makes a difference.
| Your comment is noise.
|
| Everyone knows what _thousands of kilometres_ means.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Kilometres is the 'native' unit for normal people thinking
| about driving, flying or shipping in most metric countries
| (obviously pilots and sailors use different units, like
| nautical miles, but for regular passengers it's km).
|
| All road signs, the distance indicator on the entertainment
| system in planes, etc. are always set out like that (e.g. 1617
| km to Cairns, or 11,980 km to Dubai).
|
| From my point of view (whole life in a country that is
| exclusively metric), it would be really strange to see this
| kind of distance written in millions of metres or megametres.
| Would feel totally unintuitive.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| My lab scale shows me grams to the thousandth (the accuracy is
| only to the hundredths). Would you have it show me 7000mg
| instead? What about 17000mg?
|
| I think it's much better to pick a unit that makes the most
| sense for the bulk of your readings and abuse it instead of
| changing units on me. Imagine if it went from 999mg to 1g, now
| imagine it trying to settle between them. Or you are weighing a
| dozen items that are all expected to have a weight of about 1g
| and need to log the results - think of the unnecessary
| cognitive overhead the changing units would cause.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| I think you just gave a compelling case for why there
| _should_ be multiple units. It 's much simpler to just write
| a small number and a whatever unit identifier, than have to
| read large or unwieldy numbers.
|
| I just cooked a recipe where it asked me for 100 grams of a
| paste, 90 grams of a liquid, 70 grams of a powder, 30 grams
| of a spice, 15 grams of another liquid. Do people in other
| countries have measuring spoons in gram size? And do you
| always tell people whether you meant by volume or weight?
| Tablespoons, teaspoons, cups and ounces just seems easier
| than having to measure a fraction of some large number.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Do people in other countries have measuring spoons in
| gram size? And do you always tell people whether you meant
| by volume or weight?_
|
| Grams are a mass measure. A recipe calling for X grams of Y
| requires a scale to be accurately followed. Volumetric
| measurements, _e.g._ teaspoons and ounces, are easier to
| follow, but they 're less accurate. (Canonical example is
| salt. Ask for a mass measurement of salt, and you'll always
| get the same amount of it. Ask for a volumetric quantity,
| and your mileage [hehe] will vary based on what type of
| salt is used.)
| feanaro wrote:
| I have a couple of scales when cooking. A small gram scale
| weighing up to 200g works wonders for this.
| cinntaile wrote:
| The dashboard has a tracker for carbon removal. If shopify really
| wanted to do something about that they'd close shop for 4 days
| (BF-CM), that'll have a much bigger impact than compensating for
| shipping.
| andygrd wrote:
| Having worked in the bowels of a major online retailers
| networking team during black Friday sales, I can say that a lot
| of the patterns you see in this UI are real. People do indeed get
| out of bed at ungodly hours of the morning to get two bucks
| knocked off a stereo.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Of all the years where I worked in ecommerce, the first year
| with Black Friday was the only one that was any fun.
|
| We where one the first webshop in the country to have a Black
| Friday campaign, mostly as an aftertought. The entire thing was
| just one guy in marketing, me, who hacked together a quick way
| to add the discounts and then our fantastic team of buyers who
| used to occasion to clean out old stock and mistaken purchases.
| We ran with anything from 20 - 90% discounts. As stuff sold out
| everyone just kept digging into old stock and adding insane
| discounts. It was so much fun to see items that normally didn't
| move just sell out in minutes.
|
| The next year everything was more or less normalize, planned
| and just boring and stressful as expectations from customers
| where much higher and it became more a quest to keep the
| servers from crashing.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| >It became more a quest to keep the servers from crashing.
|
| Wizard: valient knight, I have a quest worthy of honor
|
| You, feeling proud: I AM WORTHY OF SUCH A QUEST
|
| Wizard: Configure a chron job to reboot this server every 24
| hours. There is a memory leak that we can't solve and our
| customers want to buy our stuff
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| This fills me with dread. The scale and glee with which we murder
| the planet is astonishing. We deserve everything that we get.
| StriverGuy wrote:
| Slightly off topic but I am always surprised Shopify hasn't every
| created something akin to the amazon homepage that allows you to
| browse and find items at shopify stores more seamlessly.
| nathanvanfleet wrote:
| Why would anyone want to filter by that though? I should not
| want to purchase from people who use a different payment
| processor?
| cobertos wrote:
| I've wanted this exact same thing. I've used
| `site:myshopify.com item` to search via Shopify URL pattern in
| Google
| codetrotter wrote:
| Unfortunately that will exclude any Shopify powered store
| that has a custom domain.
|
| Didn't Google use to have an "inhtml:" operator or something
| that let you search for matches in the html of pages? Shopify
| powered websites have commonalities in their html that can
| give away very quickly the fact to a crawler that it is
| powered by Shopify, just by looking at the html of the main
| landing page of the shop.
|
| Also, the DNS entry for a Shopify hosted site, even if using
| a custom domain, will be either a CNAME pointing to
| shops.myshopify.com, or an A record pointing to an IP address
| owned by Shopify, like 23.227.38.65. https://who.is/whois-
| ip/ip-address/23.227.38.65
| motoxpro wrote:
| They did/do this. One of the big problems is competing with
| customers. i.e. you go from being a platform (Windows, Unity,
| Shopify, etc) to an aggregator (Amazon, Spotify, Instagram,
| etc) and your relationship goes from the small store to
| Shopify. Similar to how you might browse Doordash for "food",
| rather than look specifically for "Chipotle".
|
| Upside of an aggregator is discovery/distribution. Downside is
| you rely on the aggregator for that discovery/distribution.
|
| Rare for billion dollar businesses to be built on aggregators,
| not so rare for them to be built on platforms.
| senecaso wrote:
| We were surprised by this as well, but since one didn't exist,
| we started to create one!
|
| https://vendazzo.com/
|
| We still have a long ways to go, but you can search for items
| and filter based on things like category and distance (if you
| are trying to shop locally). We're doing things on a very tight
| budget at the moment, so sometimes the site goes down, but
| we're working on it :)
|
| If you have any feedback, we would love to hear it.
| kimsant wrote:
| Interesting! Could you explain how did you manage to find
| sites and how can you know where are they based?
| senecaso wrote:
| Right now, we gather location data from the pages
| themselves. Some shops (not many) include an address. The
| process is very error-prone though, so our accuracy in this
| area is likely not where we want it to be. We are working
| on other ways to improve that.
| cobertos wrote:
| Is it broken? It just says "An error occurred" when I typed
| "Plushie" and then "Fruit"
| senecaso wrote:
| Yep, it just went down. We've been using spot instances,
| and those are hard to come by around Black Friday. I'll
| look into it.
| senecaso wrote:
| back up!
| sdn90 wrote:
| You can do this with the Shop mobile app (it's an official
| Shopify product). I think stores are defaulted to showing up
| but they have are able to opt out.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Wouldn't it be a huge risk in some ways? People don't know site
| xyz is Shopify until they're on xyz and therefore probably have
| no qualms with Shopify hosting xyz. If it were a marketplace,
| someone "just browsing" would find something that offends their
| oh-so-delicate sensibilities and the next day some grotesque
| exaggeration like "Shopify supports terrorists" or "Shopify is
| pro/anti-abortion" leads the headline news.
| dmalik wrote:
| No website but check out the Shop app on your phone. Kind of
| does that. I also really enjoy the product tracking.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Despite using the same platform, no two companies setup their
| product catalogs the same way, from how multiple
| products/colorways are grouped together to metafields are used
| to communicate more nuanced product features. There's simply no
| way Shopify could hope to present a unified catalog given those
| implementation nuances.
| senecaso wrote:
| Yep, this is pretty much it. Amazon has the advantage that
| they are able to force their sellers to specify metadata
| about their products in very specific ways, which allows them
| to build on top of that consistency. With Shopify, as
| tomnipotent said, its all over the place, and it only gets
| worse as you cross languages.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I've seen both Amazon itself and sellers use wildly
| inconsistent ways listing products using the "multiple
| flavors of this item" functionality.
|
| Probably hands-down the most irritating metadata issue with
| Amazon is when sellers don't include quantity information
| properly - or even include quantity in the title when
| selling just one size - which I'm sure they do on purpose
| to make price per unit shopping more difficult.
|
| Sometimes the way the items are listed will be different
| between one product and another made by the same company,
| or between Amazon's listing and a third party's listing for
| the same general product...and they each have different
| types of the item available. Say, Amazon will sell Ken's
| Socks in purple and blue, all sizes in purple but only
| small in blue...while Blankenship E
|
| Things seem to get especially messy when you have a matrix
| of two 'flavors' (such as a sub-model _and_ color, or unit
| size), and not all combinations were manufactured or
| available.
|
| Even the UI isn't consistent. Sometimes it's a drop-down
| list, sometimes it's the rectangles.
|
| Oh, and often the model/part number isn't entered...
| Thorrez wrote:
| Maybe it could be opt-in. Specify your metadata in a certain
| way and you can get in a central homepage.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| This feels like the right answer. Everyone already does
| this already for product feeds to Facebook/Google.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Seems like you would also take a lot of responsibility for the
| negative experiences from that pathway.
|
| Store scams someone and Shopify takes the hit.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Yep, amazon takes a lot of earned hate for all the scammers
| on the platform. The current setup has shopify as not a real
| consumer brand and just a piece of infrastructure like how
| your VPS host isn't part of the store.
| cobertos wrote:
| The bounding shape of Michigan is so fucked xD,
| https://elixi.re/i/mf4eb.png
| jacob_rezi wrote:
| please dont swear
| cobertos wrote:
| Is this a HN thing? I actually originally censored myself
| with "f'ed" but changed it before posting as I felt weird
| doing it.
| tiagod wrote:
| It's a HN thing for some people to ask others not to swear
| and be flagged to death, at least that's the usual outcome
| from what I've seen.
| exolymph wrote:
| no, you can swear on HN, that person is just touchy for
| whatever reason
| edwardsdl wrote:
| You're fine, just ignore him.
| resonious wrote:
| I thought the same thing. I'm from Michigan and so whenever I
| see a map or globe I compulsively find North America and look
| for the hand shape. Was very disappointed to see that it is not
| present here...
| brink wrote:
| It's okay, if people can't see us and don't think we're here,
| maybe real estate prices will go down.
| fbrncci wrote:
| If the people can't find your housing market, the algorithms
| will.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| Hey Zillow, I have your new mantra^^^
| testplzignore wrote:
| In case it's not obvious what is going on: it's using the
| actual state borders for the Great Lakes states, so the water
| territory is included.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| I had to stare at the map for a minute before I found
| Michigan. They butchered the poor state!
| hereforphone wrote:
| Wait some people still have money to spend?
| kashyapc wrote:
| There's a famous Pieter Bruegel painting from 1562 called "The
| Triumph of Death" that someone contrasted with a "typical scene
| in a US department store on Black Friday" here[1].
|
| It might take a few seconds to tell apart the painting from the
| Black Friday store. ;-) * * *
|
| The original painting[2] has a gem[3] in the corner of it (that's
| not visible in[1]): where death is wreaking havoc, and a pair of
| lovers, oblivious to it, are playing guitar and singing. In that
| frame, you'll see death also playing guitar right behind them, in
| a neat visual rhyme, implying that their fate is sealed too.
|
| [1]
| https://www.devblog.no/sites/devblog.no/files/styles/800px_w...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triumph_of_Death
|
| [3] You have to zoom into the lower right corner to see it:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triumph_of_Death#/media/Fi...
| ytdytvhxgydvhh wrote:
| Funny that the "typical scene in a US department store on Black
| Friday" is in a Brazilian store. Not sure if it's a reasonable
| approximation of US stores on Black Friday or not.
| kache_ wrote:
| is it written in ruby?
| gnarcoregrizz wrote:
| Never got an order confirmation email for an item I just bought.
| Not entirely surprised.
| postedthis wrote:
| As Retailer on Shopify I want to say:
|
| It bugs me the Shopify engineering team are spending their time
| making gimmicks like this rather than improving their platform.
| (Which is lacking features, buggy and requires you to install
| about 15 different addons just to function...
| [deleted]
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| List everything you'd like so that competitors can maybe
| address it. You'll get what you want one way or the other.
| dewey wrote:
| > making gimmicks like this rather than improving their
| platform
|
| I'd argue that doing marketing is part of improving the
| platform too.
| adflux wrote:
| This reminds me of the time I worked for an ecommerce firm, and
| one of our customers used the same backend for physical and
| online shopping. Systems went down due to some bug causing cpu
| load. People in the store couldnt pay for their goods. Many angry
| phone calls were had, whilst I frantically searched through the
| logs to find the bug.
| therealmarv wrote:
| wow, now I want to see that for Amazon in real time globally!
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| As everyone who ever worked in geo-based databases, I wasn't
| suprised at the dots at "Null Island" at 0degN 0degE. But funny
| nevertheless.
| FredPret wrote:
| Curious how there's always something going on in that one spot
| off the coast of Nigeria eh?
| mherdeg wrote:
| Gosh I've really enjoyed using the Shop Pay checkout experience
| on an increasingly large number of ecommerce sites this past few
| months. It didn't really click until recently that this was all
| Shopify backed!
|
| Makes me think it might not be too late to figure out a sensible
| valuation for NYSE:SHOP and invest.
| ksec wrote:
| Every time I checked I thought they were over valued. $200B!
| But P/E is only 60, and they are still growing. This makes Tobi
| net worth higher than Jack Dorsey.
|
| Then I looked at revenue was only ~4 billion. Something doesn't
| add up. Turns out they have ~$3B from Gain on Sale of Security.
| boringg wrote:
| They also have investments in a bunch of tech companies and
| are moving into a lot of different markets. Wallstreet likes
| to look at the GMV which is second only to Amazon for gross
| merchandise volume sold on a platform.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| They seem like they'll be a steady climber. I'm not sure who
| has the inertia or a compelling enough product to knock them
| down any time soon.
|
| Having said that, I don't know anything about this and I only
| invest for fun/to keep an eye on these things.
| critical_banjo wrote:
| WooCommerce is growing at a steady pace, with a YoY growth of
| 50%-100%
| jesterson wrote:
| Wait until you try it.
|
| As someone who is on merchant side related to Shopify, SHOP is
| greatly overvalued
| littleweep wrote:
| Buy put options and show us how right you are?
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(page generated 2021-11-26 23:02 UTC)