Nastybad Doomsayer Things and the Idea of Loyalty in a Digital Age

The LivingSocial outage last week brought on some real doomsayers, including those at slate.com, calling Groupon the "undisputed winner" and predicting LivingSocial's demise.

 

Unfortunately, what these doomsayers fail to grasp is the idea of loyalty in the digital age: If you do not earn loyalty, you are truly doomed. Nintendo is slowly but surely winning me back on the loyalty front, while companies like Hyperkin and Apple have my utmost loyalty at this point.

 

Now, loyalty in this case does NOT mean blind devotion against all else. Unlike, say, Fandroids (aka Android fans) who force the Android mobile operating system down your throat at every given opportunity, the loyalty I am talking about is the kind that matters: Someone (especially a digital store) that you trust with your money. I trust Amazon only so far with my money. Same with PayPal. Same with Humble Bundle.

 

But something like GOG? I can trust them implicitly with money and any "major purchases" that I make on my GOG account, I trust GOG to not screw me over, or add stupid hoops I have to jump through, I trust GOG to hold my data, not use it for ill purposes, and in general give me a lot of value for my dollar. That is true digital loyalty, ladies and gentlemen.

 

As far as "loyalty" goes among digital deal websites, I go where the deals are. Now whether those deals are on Groupon, or LivingSocial, or AmazonLocal, or some weird deal site associated with a magazine or other website, I care not. If there is a deal I'm interested in, I get that deal regardless of the site it's on. But now LivingSocial has my loyalty. They noticed a security issue, and they fixed it. That's a big deal, and I'll be checking LivingSocial first from here on out, because I'm not sure yet if I can trust Groupon with my money.  So, all you nastybad doomsayer things can go find something else to crow about.