Has social media become the new ‘Black Friday’? On Friday, HP announced that they were discontinuing production and service to their less than 2 months old HP Touchpad. The touchpad has received mixed reviews by some and was not worth the comparable iPad price. But does the price really make a difference? Yes, it most certainly does. After HP’s announcement it was rumored in cyber-ville that the price was going to drop and the once common tablet would now become obsolete. Switch to 72 hours later and it has become obsolete but not for the reason you’d think.
Thousands of consumers flocked to electronic and retail stores on Saturday for what I refer to as August’s Social Media Black Friday. If it were not for social media websites, like twitter, I never would have found out about the sale of the newly discontinued HP touchpad. HP was dropping the price from $499 to $150 for the 32GB touchpad and the $399 was dropping to $99 for the 16 GB touchpad. The prices were first only contained to the HP website – HP’s main website quickly sold out and simply not prepared to handle the volume of orders. Twitter folk caught on and logged onto HP’s Small Business site to place their orders for their chance at a $99 touchpad. Even though orders were placed and credit cards were charged, HP said it was a mistake and they simply do not have the stock to fill most of those orders placed through the small business site but they will be honored once the stock gets replenished if you choose not to cancel your order.
However, other retailers soon caught on at Wal-Mart, Target, Office Max and Office Depot all dropped the price to follow HP’s lead. Other consumers flocked to Best Buy and Staples only to be turned away and to be told they could not honor the sale price and/or they were being shipped back to HP. But it was only a few hours later that Staples was honoring the sales price and Best Buy would honor the price as well but it would take Best Buy 24 hours to honor it. Early this morning, HP touchpad’s became available on BestBuy.com at the sale price and those early bird risers were to take advantage and several thousand people got orders through before those 32GB and 16GB touchpads were sold out. Amazon has still yet to conform to the rest of the retailers and drop their prices, in fact, the touchpad is simply unavailable to even purchase from the online retailer giant. I predict, Amazon will drop their prices sometime this week if not as soon as Monday and they will be flooded with HP touchpad buyers as well. If they don’t, they will have missed out on a major cyber sale all through the word of social media.
I checked out Best Buy’s website this morning before logging onto twitter and caught on myself. I went back worth between the 16GB and 32GB and simply couldn’t decide – I quickly found out that in-store pickup was not an option so I had to go for shipping. By the time all said and done the 16GB was sold out so I quickly jumped on the 32GB touchpad. I have placed the order and got my confirmation. However, my order status has remained at confirmed and my credit card will not be charged until it is shipped. I think that is only fair considering if I do not know for sure if one is coming my way, but the not knowing is irritating.
So now consumers are saying that tablet prices were priced wrong all along – is the $500 priced iPad simply too expensive for this economy? Or will consumers just pay anything ‘for a deal’ or that is drastically reduced? I would never pay $500 for a tablet but I would pay $99-$150. For one, the name HP touchpad is definitely a lot better than the Apple iPad! I hope my order comes through and I can tell you how I like the new touchpad but I really wouldn’t have any else to compare it too other than my 4 year old Dell laptop and my year old iPhone! Or will HP completely reverse their decision and continue production of the touchpad but just have the price permanently lowered to make it more affordable to the American market? All these questions will shortly be answered, I'm sure. The most important aspect of this post was to show you the power of social media and how retailers are now using twitter to post their sales and deals across the globe. If they have not, they should certainly start tomorrow and I guarantee that Black Friday sales can compare to the 'Cyber Monday' sales on a more regular monthly basis than simply just once a year.
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