A machine will serve you a free Big Mac
bostonglobe.com
bostonglobe.com
As with most things, such systems are equal parts clever and stupid. The gamers in the crowd will get free burgers with day old twitter accounts that have specious handles like @NeverBelieveMyTweets or @ShillingForTheMan etc. This will cause McDonald's to hastily try to push updates to the software to check the ages of accounts, handles with bad words in them, etc. And of course it is "working around" a number of FTC regulations on implicit advertising in exchange for free merchandise (those tweets better include a disclaimer!) and the cash starved company (Twitter) itself is not seeing "advertising" or "promoting" revenue (it would be really interesting if the BigMac machine tries to use your account to promote its own tweet from your account).
So once again we have a "brilliant" idea where if it is only used in exactly the way they want it to be used, would be brilliant, but is so easily exploitable that such use will likely be overwhelmed by mischief resulting in a much more costly campaign.
>> The gamers in the crowd will get free burgers with day old twitter accounts
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-twitter-hacker-20160609-snap-story.html
"The hacker... is asking 10 bitcoin, or just under $6,000,
for what he or she claims are the log-in credentials
for 379 million Twitter accounts."The cynicism and disdain for consumers that it took to make something like this is almost sickening.
What a world we've created.
Not once have they forced me to do anything to recieve it. There are exceptions like alcohol give-aways where they card everyone, but they don't write down names or collect data from that, simply verify for legal reasons. It is always a transaction where they just give you the thing without hesitation.
"...value they generated for you?"
What "value" are they generating? They're asking me to try their product in the hopes that I might like it and buy more of it in the future. They're asking for my time, for my attention, to consider their product.
The value generated here seems quite clear to me though. They're giving food. Food is valuable. The degree of value differs from person to person, but McDonald's is taking a reasonable bet that new versions of one of the world's most popular fast foods is valuable to enough people for their marketing push to yield a positive ROI.
There are also several other types of value generated. They've created a novel experience (hamburgers from an automated vending machine). The excitement gained from observing and trying a novel experience is also valuable.
That's where I disagree. They're marketing. They're giving away samples. McDonald's is not in the business of free food, they're in the business of getting people to pay for food.
If they're trying to test the waters for vending-machine produced food, put a nominal price tag on it. A $2 price-tag signals that they're exploring this as a retail option and giving a friendly discount to early adopters. A "free but let us tweet for you" price-tag signals this was designed by the marketing department as some stunt.
If you like paying for marketing with your own reputation, knock yourself out.
No company, aside from aid organizations, are in the business of giving away free anything.
Your other points are critiques on whether you think their marketing execution will be successful and whether or not the net exchange of value is positive for you.
I'm talking about whether McDonald's is generating value for people by giving them food. They are.
It sounds like for you personally, the cost to obtain that value is too high and your net value is negative. That's okay. That equation balances differently for others, and that's what McDonald's is betting on. It doesn't mean they aren't generating value for some people though.
"Take a selfie with our cam for a free burger!" (* May be used in marketing materials. All shots copyright McDonald's.)
"Give a blood sample for a free burger!" (* Samples may be sold for medical research purposes. Interesting genes found may be patented. Blood sample becomes exclusive property of McDonald's.)
Where do you draw the line? What's too invasive?
This is marketing, it shouldn't demand things from people other than their attention.
Which part of my logic is twisty?
> Where do you draw the line? What's too invasive?
The line is draw by consumers, marketers, consumer protection agencies and the legal system. If marketers are being deceptive, that's a legal and moral issue. Marketers have stepped over the legal line and they've been sued for deceptive marketing practices. Setting aand enforcing a moral line is a whole other discussion :)
In the case of the article, I haven't seen any indication anything deceptive is taking place. The price to receive a big mac seems clear: allow McDonald's to send a tweet. People can either choose to pay that price or not. If that price isn't clear (eg. McDonald's asks for Twitter permission, but doesn't tell you they'll send out a tweet) and McDonald's is being deceptive, then they should be punished by the legal system.
Apple could have done the same thing with an automated vending machine which dispenses new Macbooks to evaluate consumer reactions to the touchbar. You get a new Macbook if you allow Apple to send a tweet out from your account. I'm willing to pay that price. You might not be. You are free to make that choice. If you think Apple's actions are stepping over the line, then you are free to campaign against them to change laws or get them to change their practices so they reflect your definition of the line.
I personally don't agree with your definition of the line, so I don't feel motivated to change the laws to prohibit this behavior.
You're entitled to your opinions though, plus you're free to irritate your friends on Twitter with your free burger spam.
So there isn't too much of interest here. This is really a marketing campaign and not progress on automation.
> And even the newest technology often requires some degree of human interaction. For instance, burgers may pop out of the Boston McDonald’s machine unassisted next week, but they’ll be loaded into it by actual people. For now, at least.
So, yeah, nothing actually interesting here, just a marketing stunt.
Toasting four bread surfaces for each alone would be energy prohibitive.
Sure, but this could have just been an experiment in automation. They wouldn't necessarily release a device like this to the market, but it could be a prototype they learn from.
Now, from time to time, I just do "Big Mac parties" with friends and family, and with €12 ($13) I can get the ingredients for 5 homemade "McMenus"... You can't beat that even with all the automation of the world. xD
[0] http://www.tesco.com/groceries/product/details/?id=292462714
lol
Also, some humans are always going to want to talk to a human - maybe to express praise or dissatisfaction with something trivial about their visit, and receive a Hawthorne effect-like reward[1] - and so the human becomes a "human interface device" part of the machine.
Remember how self-check registers were supposed to replace grocery store checkers? It's been over a decade, and stores still pay people to wave food over a red light.
Eatsa is sort of illustrative on the customer service side; they have a single person out front to open & close the restaurant, monitor the restaurant and clean up as necessary.
I think that getting rid of the last person will be tricky with anywhere that has a dining area, but I could imagine a drive-through McDonalds with no employees, or a McDonald's vending machine.
every business will keep at least 1-2 employees per location,
mostly to handle extreme edge cases like flooding, cars being
driven into the building, or hostage situations.
I dare that you are right - every business will still need a few employees for each location - but rather than hostage situations or floods, the cases will be rather more humdrum. Whether it's computers crashing, ovens needing oiling, cleaning, supplies that need refilling - there will be plenty of routine tasks that need a human to carry out.
Many large companies are trying very hard, and tech is basically here, see for example:
https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16008589011
Self-check is getting a lot better too (I don't understand why it's getting delayed).
I also believe that employee arbitrage is an opportunity (serving high-cost areas from low-cost areas, and improving employee usage and efficiency), and I'm going to personally invest in building tech to enable that.
Also, really sucks that the homeless will be left out of this giveaway.
1. An overload of Big Macs eventually becomes bad for you.
2. There's no real barrier to people helping the homeless
by donating their Twitter handle to this minor
activity.
3. People without private personal access to the internet
still have public resources they can manipulate, if
some trivial social media account eventually nets them
a burger.
4. There's no real barrier to creating unlimited Twitter
accounts. I could whip up 100 disposable handles at a
moment's notice if so inclined. Side note: how does
twitter feel about this?
5. Because there are such low barriers to burger
acquisition, and the available inventory of burgers is
finite, do not be surprised when the not-so-infinite
supply of burgers dries up, if machines get mobbed.
So, while the machines are not a bottomless pit of
burgers (lest cows go extinct) the non-homeless do
clearly possess an advantage in emptying out the
machines. Can't win 'em all...