The Facebook of ecommerce — Benedict Evans

Perhaps the demise of traditional retail and media can be explained by the Internet offering better alternatives for curating your own community of like-minded people/products and removing most of the friction around connecting.

When we look back over the past 100 years, traditional commerce (and the culture it indirectly endorsed) was primarily curated by a single person’s point-of-view. Even when commerce moved online, to places like Amazon or Farfetch, retailers still controlled the types of things consumers purchased. Online commerce didn’t innovate a new shopping expe... See more

Amazon is at a crossroads and like the brands who depend heavily on Instagram or Facebook.com, the rule of online retail is multichannel diversification. The product manufacturers and brands who keep up an even-handed approach to acquisition will not be impaired when one channel determines their fates for them.

When we look back over the past 100 years, traditional commerce (and the culture it indirectly endorsed) was primarily curated by a single person’s point-of-view. Even when commerce moved online, to places like Amazon or Farfetch, retailers still controlled the types of things consumers purchased. Online commerce didn’t innovate a new shopping expe... See more

Facebook Shops and Instagram Shops represent a model of e-commerce that more closely aligns with consumers' natural shopping behavior, combining serendipitous discovery and social inspiration.

This is obvious, perhaps, but there’s plenty that online grocers can do to improve product discovery in their stores, from photography to personalized recommendations. The beauty of Amazon or Instacart knowing everything you’ve purchased means it also knows what you haven’t yet purchased.