Coupon Feeds and $400 Email

Two financially related new web services launched today. One potentially good, the other just ludicrous-- coupons via RSS and Millionaire Email.

Zixxo.com is still in beta [and currently their site appears to be going in and out]. Basically it offers coupons for local businesses via RSS feed, which means if you use bloglines you get notified when the coupons come in. Of course it's all a matter of how worth it the coupons are. I get huge value packs of coupons every week that just go in the trash because it's too much to search through all those Madame Alexander doll offers and personalized checkbook coupons to find something I might conceivably use.

Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch had this to say on why it's a good idea: "In the long run, Zixxo should gather incredibly valuable information on consumer demand. Zixxo can then go to local or national retailers and offer to sell into this demand. For example, if Zixxo has ten thousand bay area users who are looking for deals on flowers, Zixxo can take this information to 1800Flowers and offer to sell a coupon into this demand stream. It's pull advertising at its best."

And then there's the bad: "Do you belong to high society? Then take this chance to demonstrate your position in an unambiguos manner. The digital era has begun and free email accounts are available for the ordinary joe. Rise above the crowd!"

Yep you've heard of the personal concierge and the black Amex cards. Now you can have a basic email service that costs 399$ per month from millionaires24!!! A sure sign that you have way too much money.

And it's not even good. It looks like they threw a custom template on one of the free email packages that comes free with web hosting software. Given the fact that I was able to partially log into it by using the default username, I don't think it's very well-coded. This is a total rip off.