An “aggregator” is a company which aggregates demand in a vertical and has three key features: 1) it has a direct relationship with its customers, 2) it has effectively zero marginal costs for serving users and 3) its costs to acquire customers fall over time. Level 1 aggregators acquire supply (Netflix). Level 2 aggregators don’t own their supply... See more

Super-AggregatorsWhat makes Facebook and Google unique is that not only do they have zero transaction costs when it comes to serving end users, they also have zero transaction costs when it comes to both suppliers and advertisers.Start with supply: not only is the vast majority of online content accessible to Google’s search engine (unsurprisingly,... See more

What followed was probably my first clear articulation of Aggregation Theory, albeit without the name. The point about effectively infinite competition, though, is a critical one. Neither reach nor timeliness were differentiators, but rather commodities; the companies that dominated on the Internet were those — Google and Facebook in particular —... See more

Because aggregators deal with digital goods, there is an abundance of supply; that means users reap value through discovery and curation, and most aggregators get started by delivering superior discovery.