Monkey See, Monkey Do
Hope you’re hanging on there as we are with the Leafs! Have you planned your summer yet? We suggest you do soon - rates keep bouncing up!
This week we have Shopify’s new ship; Stripe v. Plaid; TikTok pulls off a Facebook.
We are also proud to announce our latest Expert Circle cohort! You can check out their profiles here.
Analytics, Digital, Design In Action
Holy Ship
Shopify has acquired logistics firm Deliverr for USD2.1Bn. The largest acquisition in Shopify’s history will create an end-to-end logistics platform to unlock fast and easy fulfillment for millions of merchants.
This follows Shopify’s prior investment in 6 River Systems. Shopify has been pressured to match Amazon’s growing logistics foothold and potential merchant solutions business. Ultimately, it’s a race to remove supply chain complexity for merchants of all sizes, regardless of platform, democratizing access to end-to-end logistics for independent brands.
However, despite this, Shopify stock is down close to 80% from its prior highs and investors, employees, and CEO Tobi Lutke is not happy. Indeed, Tobi took to Twitter to question the investor community.
Stripe v. Plaid
Fintech juggernaut Stripe has launched Financial Connections, which allows Stripe’s customers connect directly to their customer’s bank accounts, to access financial data to speed up or run certain kinds of transactions.
Services cover verifying accounts for payments and payouts; to check balances ahead of a payment being made to ensure there’s enough money there; to confirm account ownership. Details like these can help underwrite risk for loans; to track spending patterns and automatically pay bills; and more, financial data that’s useful or necessary to run financial transactions over other Stripe services like Stripe Connect, ACH payments or Stripe Capital-powered loans.
If this sounds familiar then it’s similar to Plaid, another fintech upstart that was supposed to have been acquired by Visa but was blocked by regulators. The tension now is that some people, including Plaid CEO and co-founder Zachary Perret, believe that Stripe may have used its relationship with Plaid to amass information on how to replicate Plaid’s products. Espionage at the highest levels may have played a role.
TikTok Pulls off a Facebook
TikTok is rolling out a new “Friends” tab that replaces the “Discover” tab in the bottom menu of the app. TikTok says the new tab is going to roll out to more users over the coming weeks and that it will allow users on the platform to find content from people they’ve connected with.
TikTok’s decision to move away from a Discover tab is interesting and indicates that it’s looking to offer a new way to recommend content based on your actual friendships, a strategy popularized by social media pioneer Facebook.
Speaking of Facebook, the company is removing Nearby Friends, Weather Alerts, and location history features from May 31st 2022, an indication that it’s waving the white flag in the neighborhood friend-finding market. Ironically, it’s seen that Snapchat - whom Facebook copied so many times - has won the finding market.
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