These behavioral shifts are creating rapid changes in our economy. There will be both short-term and long-term impact as consumers and businesses are forced to change their behavior radically for weeks or months.
Apps like Instacart itself will become key marketing platforms. Instacart is fully aware of this, and is moving quickly to become an ad platform. The top Instacart result becomes the new endcap placement. How long before the algorithm’s out-of-stock replacement suggestion becomes the most hotly contested spot?
NFTs are interesting in that they have built-in provable scarcity that ensures value. In the analog world, scarcity is something either circumstantial (the virus that wiped out tulip production) or mandated (Beanie Babies being “retired”). With NFTs, it’s in the code. CryptoPunks are valuable, for instance, because there will only ever be 10,000.
WeChat has integrated both approaches in the product development process. However, it leans more heavily on the Grand Design approach given Allen’s top-down management style. All features have to go through Allen for approval. As a result, WeChat has benefited enormously from having a singular and coherent identity.