I'm not sure it's really that complex, in their statement they've announced they will honour one purchase per person, not bulk buys, and it's quite easy to limit how many people make purchases either by manually watching it, or even with a little bit of code to kill it after X sales. Regardless, I either respect Razer for their pro-customer decision, or for their marketing idea, either way.
(And I don't think the Blade will ever be available outside North America. It's an irrelevant product that they created as a marketing gimmick.)
In the industry a hell of a lot of people think it was a marketing trick, not a mistake. I'm leaning that way too, based on my knowledge of people within Razer (though I should point out that while I know plenty of people there, I don't have any specific knowledge about this situation, just speculation).
To pull this off purposefully wouldn't even have to be too expensive, we have no way of knowing whether they are honouring thousands of orders or a couple of hundred. And regarding margins, a hell of a lot of the costs associated with a typical product sale come from distribution (the distributor takes a cut, the retailer/etailer takes a cut, plus MDF marketing costs), so this deal being through the Razer site will certainly help keep the losses down.
Also side note to jamornh: the Blade isn't available in the UK yet, so bad example - but your point still stands, 90% is definitely a loss.
The article is written very much against social media sales people, who are basically just like sales people in any other field. The truth is that an awful lot of companies have hopped on the social wagon and push for it themselves, without needing to be sold on it.
Social media is just a small part of my company, we offer it as a service but only to companies who specifically request it, and then we ask that they provide expected KPIs up front which we can hit, and that KPIs should be related to the platform (e.g. likes, reach on Facebook), not related to sales - this way it is up to them to decide whether the spend is worth it or not, all we do is ensure that we deliver what they want from us. We've never pushed anyone to increase spend on social media (from a company point of view, we'd far rather they spend marketing budget with us away from social media...)
Despite this, despite the fact that we don't push it at all, our biggest social account spends $500k/year on Facebook with us, purely on community building. So sure, maybe some companies are being sold on it by salesmen, but plenty are making their own choices here.
Health - I've never been particularly careful in terms of looking after my body (smoking, eating, etc. etc.) but don't want to do anything that could have a shorter term risk, which is why I've never, and will never, touch anything stronger than coke.
To be honest I've never really thought about legal issues. Had a couple of occasions where I had weed in my pocket and was a little scared by proximity of cops, but never enough that they would have really cared had they noticed. And never been close to any issues with police and cocaine, so never stopped to worry about it.
Until fairly recently I didn't use it often, and no, I haven't noticed any real changes in myself (other than when on it).
I've smoked weed for a much longer time - though not much lately, and never a full-time stoner, just relaxing with friends now and then - and while I don't think that's really changed me either, it does feel like it has a greater ability to, because getting stoned is about relaxing and thinking, it's a state of mind you can go to when sober, and certainly I know a couple of people who are always smoking it and their normal personality certainly seems to have merged with their stoned personality.
Long-term changes aren't what's making me stop, it's the worry that if I keep going much longer I'll spiral out of control, which definitely isn't good for my bank balance and has a decent chance of not being good from a safety point of view, either.
(And I don't think the Blade will ever be available outside North America. It's an irrelevant product that they created as a marketing gimmick.)