Planet Money
Did a pizza restaurant’s humble status page change how we wait forever?
When you order a Lyft or Uber, you get texts every few minutes about your car approaching and arriving. When you have a package coming, you get a notification when it’s shipped, when it’s en route, and when it’s out for delivery. Why do so many companies send these constant updates?
We have a theory: It’s because of Domino’s. In 2008, Domino’s launched the Pizza Tracker, a novel tool that delighted customers by allowing them to obsessively monitor their pizza’s progress from order to oven to delivery. The Pizza Tracker became a canonical model for other companies trying to improve their customers’ experiences of waiting for all kinds of products and services. And now? Pizza Trackers are everywhere.
On today’s show: how the Domino’s Pizza Tracker shaped the internet, and how trackers went from transparently sharing information with consumers to — in some cases — actively deceiving us.
Support:
— Planet Money+
Read:
— Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life
— Our weekly longform Planet Money newsletter
— Our weekly Indicator round-up newsletter
Follow:
— Instagram
— TikTok
— YouTube
— Facebook
This episode was hosted by Nick Fountain and Alex Mayyasi. It was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler, edited by Liza Yeager, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Cena Loffredo and Jimmy Keeley. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.
Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
-
Diary of a WNBA negotiator
Today the WNBA season tips off, but Dallas Wings veteran forward Alysha Clark has already won a high-stakes competition. She – and a Nobel Prize winning economist – were on the team that negotiated a…
-
How we got free agents in baseball
Curt Flood was the best center fielder in baseball and one of the game’s highest paid players. He took the St. Louis Cardinals to the World Series three times. Then he got traded to the…
-
How to make a BOOK into a bestseller
In the world of commercial publishing, there are few crowning achievements more coveted than a place on the New York Times Best Seller List. But how does a book actually end up there? There is,…
-
Spirit Airlines and the future of cheap flights
It’s way more than fuel costs that pushed Spirit Airlines to the brink of liquidation and led President Trump to muse about “buying” them. Many low cost airlines are struggling due to a canny and…
-
Battlefield rare earths: How the U.S. lost to China
At one point in history, one U.S. company monopolized the rare earths industry. Then China took over the industry. Can the U.S. bring it back? Rare earths are critical to making, like, everything. From smart…
-
Live: Anthropic co-founder on AI and jobs
We talk with Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark and Chief Economist at Redfin Daryl Fairweather about two of the biggest issues of our time: AI and housing. We have been crisscrossing America doing live shows to…
-
Do prediction market bettors make anything better?
Have you noticed a lot of young people getting into antenna-maxxing as alpha? Or, maybe searching for any bit of copium after they fat-fingered and got rinsed? Or maybe they farmed during a yes-fest on…
-
How to get through the Strait of Hormuz
The United States has been at war with Iran since February 28th. And for a month and a half, Iran’s main leverage over the U.S. has been their control over the Strait of Hormuz —…
-
BOOKstore Economics
How do bookstores choose the books they stock, and how does that affect what customers read? It may not seem like it, but every shelf in a bookstore is a highly valuable and contested piece…
-
A pro-worker experiment in private equity
Live event info and tickets here. If your company got bought by a private equity firm, how would you feel? Maybe a little nervous? You might find yourself wondering if there will be layoffs. And…