Top Articles: Amazon’s Everything Strategy Comes to Light
Week 29, 2017
Amazon has said that it wants to sell everything from A to Z. It turns out when they say “everything,” they really do mean everything. Previously, all the members of GAFA mostly stayed within their own silos of business, but Amazon seems to be the willingest of the four to encroach on the others’ territory. As a member of GAFA, the company already had a great empire, but the e-commerce platform is further expanding its reach into content distribution, all-encompassing app ecosystems, food, social media, and more with no signs of stopping. Though these moves and jumps may seem chaotic, there is actually a method to the madness.
Here are the top articles to read this week:
1. The First Alexa Phone Gets Amazon Even Closer to Total Domination
By Brian Barrett from Wired
A major part of Alexa’s success is its third-party integrations. Google Assistant might have more accessible knowledge and Siri might be more conversational, but Alexa is everywhere. One of the few spaces where it seemed like Amazon couldn’t get as much traction was the smartphone where Alexa was only accessible as a secondary app . However, Alexa has recently been incorporated as the primary digital assistant for a new generation of smartphones. It may not be the best digital assistant, but by opening up their ecosystem, Amazon is ensuring that Alexa is the most popular one.
2. Look out, YouTube and Facebook: Amazon’s coming for video publishers
By Sahil Patel from Digiday
Amazon is competing for publishers’ attention (and money) with their plethora of streaming platforms. A video distribution platform is nothing without content, so Amazon is offering pretty sweet deals for publishers and creators to come over from YouTube and Facebook. Interestingly, while the other platforms focus more on short-form content, Amazon is positioning itself as a place for long-form, long-term content. So even though it’s adopting the subscription-based and ad-based models of YouTube and Facebook, Amazon is smartly skewing from this cornered market.
3. Amazon launches Spark, a shoppable feed of stories and photos aimed at Prime members
By Sarah Perez from TechCrunch
Social and community apps and websites are now directly integrating e-commerce into their platforms to increase profitability and gather more digital insights. Essentially, this means that they are drawing user engagement and monetization away from traditional e-commerce platforms like Amazon. To do something about this, Amazon created Spark, which, while they call it a better “product discovery” tool, is really laying the groundwork for a new social platform. Amazon is creating a seamless experience from viewing to purchasing content literally in one fell swoop.
4. Jeff Bezos Is Officially Coming For Blue Apron–And Investors Are Fleeing
By Maya Kosoff from Vanity Fair
After getting physical with its Whole Foods acquisition, Amazon has now set its sights on another food service industry: meal-kit deliveries. Blue Apron was one of the biggest names in meal-kit delivery services until Amazon announced intentions to launch its own meal-kit. In the past AmazonFresh, their grocery delivery service, had mixed reviews at best with many complaining about the freshness of the food. Now that Blue Apron and others have established that the meal-kit model is viable, Amazon has the opportunity to reinvent their AmazonFresh brand via their new distribution outlets, AKA Whole Foods stores.
5. Amazon might launch its own WhatsApp competitor that lets you order food and split bills
By Shona Ghosh from Business Insider
The success of WeChat as a super-app among Chinese users supports the possibility of a similar ecosystem evolving in the US. So far no one has come close to achieving this goal, but Amazon appears to think that it can be the one to rule them all. The company is reportedly working on an all-inclusive app called “Anytime” where users can do a whole lot more than merely message a friend. While the timeline for this product is unclear, investing in multiple services on a single platform has transparent value of user engagement and monetization.
Curated by Hadley Stork
