A fast moving bot brings largely anonymous merchants together with subscribers from all over the world to deliver unanticipated and perhaps unwanted surprise packages. Some might call it pointless. But this experiment has so far brought joy and laughs to enough people that I think we will keep it going.

I am thankful for everyone who is part of this project… the bot, although surely it does not care. The subscribers, who have a good sense of humor. The merchants, although they have no idea that they are participating. The team behind the project, which has been making sure the bot does not go off the rails.

If you are in the US, I hope you found some turkey today. If you somehow missed it on the homepage, check out the unboxing compilation I put together for YouTube a few days ago.

Thanks to @RyanSonofnectar for the above roboturkey picture.

The bot is using it’s feedback database to gradually improve the packages it buys. As we get ready to launch Bobcat In A Box 2.0, I just wanted to highlight this short article on how the bot handles feedback on products from subscribers.

We have run a few experiments with using feedback data from subscribers to pick new products. This week this capability will be rolled out to everyone. The exciting part is that the bot is learning from the packages it sent to find better, more interesting ones. Given the volume of packages ordered, the bot might be able to quickly get a quite refines sense of what the most surprising and delightful small products are on the internet.

Be assured that we are not sharing any of this data. Re-targeting can be creepy and that is not what this is about. We are simply improving the bot over time using feedback data.

Questions? Email me at alexander@bobcatinabox.com

I just wanted to highlight one of the items the bot bought last week with the keyword “magic”, as you might be surprised to find items under $1 with free shipping on Amazon.

The bot buys quite a few items from Amazon, although note as many as AliExpress and Ebay that have larger reservoirs of $1 and $2 products. The benefit of Amazon is fast shipping times – unlike the Chinese merchants that take 4-8 weeks to deliver.