Pinterest doubles down on social commerce

Influencers are the future of discovery-driven, brand-centric commerce. This means that they’re juxtaposed to Amazon and search-driven, brand-agnostic commerce. Picks and shovels like Shopify and Stripe enable influencer commerce.

The optics of successful liquidity events for Blue Nile, Zullily, Chewy and Zappos, and the incredible traction in the 2000s of The GAP as a public vertical consumer brand established meaningful consumer business outcomes. These potential to repeat history through a new crop of Direct to Consumer upstarts paired well with the pent up venture capita... See more

Now-established players have learned that Instagram advertisements and influencer campaigns only scale to a point: they can net no more than a few hundred thousand of a brand’s “first best” customers. This has driven a shift toward physical retail and prompted founders to agonize over if and when to peddle their wares on Amazon, making direct to co... See more

These features create new monetization paths for businesses and creators through selling products, providing another way to participate in the Passion Economy. Because brand sponsorships were mainly accessible to creators with large followings, the addition of e-commerce functionality should lower the barrier to earning income from the platform.