Pinduoduo and The Rise of Social E-Commerce

Chinese social-commerce apps like Douyin (Tiktok in China) or Xiaohongshu are closer to what Curator-led retail experiences could be. Verified influencers are able to list or tag products sourced from wholesale sites like Taobao or JD.com, and followers can check out directly on the streamer's page. Douyin, which has about 300M daily active users, ... See more

Pinduoduo recently announced a move into real estate. Users paid a ~$1k refundable deposit to take part in a team purchase on a 1,000 unit property under development. 600 units were sold. It appears unrelated to the core business at first, but real estate has a high GMV and typically precedes many other large purchases made by new families. Similar... See more