?? Did Amazon just create the future of shopping?

Welcome back to?Espresso,?the #1 morning shot for your?curiosity.

??Today's Shot:?Amazon releases?Inspire,?a Tiktok-style video feed that could transform the future of shopping ??

? What Happened?

Last week, Amazon began a beta rollout of Inspire, a Tiktok-like shopping experience within its flagship app.

Consumers with the feature enabled can shop normally through search or consume vertical photo/video content from brands and influencers.

Each post will have all relevant Amazon products tagged and linked, creating the most seamless possible buying experience.

On first use, the app will prompt users to self-select into interest categories and then will immediately begin serving relevant content.

For influencers creating the content, Amazon has pledged to enable a rev share through their Amazon Influencer Program.

???Our Take

My gut is telling me that Inspire is either going to be a huge flop or pioneer the future of shopping.

For the sake of our thousands of readers at home, I'm going to steelman the argument, sharing a POV for both sides.

Pro: Why is Inspire genius?

TL;DR

1. Shortest path to customer satisfaction
2. The format meets the customer where they want to be
3. Bolsters trustworthiness of reviews

Explanation

Amazon has already built one of the best product searches in the world.

In less than 30 seconds, I can go from "I need trash bags" to "Thank you for your purchase".

But that's the use case when I know what I want.

Most of the time, I don't know what I want because I don't know what's out there.

I rely on social content to inspire me with products to buy and use cases to buy them for.

Amazon's problem is that with the mass adoption of Tiktok, Instagram, and YouTube, content creators are serving up product inspiration that is then purchased directly from the brand's website.

Amazon is a middleman that's being skipped over.

And to be fair, the buy process to go from Tiktok video to DTC purchase isn't the smoothest.

It usually involves watching a video, seeing something interesting, going to the creator's profile, clicking a linktree, finding the right link, navigating to the brand site, searching for the product, confirming it's the correct product, and then buying.

From a consumer's POV, that's suboptimal.

I should be able to just watch a video and click on the product directly within the video to buy.

Instagram is the only platform that has executed this implementation with any significance, but they take a cut when they reroute a user to Amazon.

So Reason #1 it's genius is because it will provide the shortest path between consumer desire and consumer satisfaction.

Reason #2 is that vertical video is the content format du jour. It's what people want.

If Amazon can meet consumers where they are, they might motivate themselves to spend more time on Amazon's platform.

Reason #3 is that fake/untrustworthy reviews are a huge problem on Amazon.

Everyone knows reviews are botted and so they have trouble trusting them.

A content network with influencer-created video content is much easier to validate and trust. Inspire could become the world's best review network.

Con: Why will Inspire flop?

TL;DR

1. Customers don't want to come to Amazon's app to watch videos
2. Content creators create poor content
3. Content creators create scammy/misleading content

Explanation

There are a lot of reasons this could fail.

The most obvious to me is that people don't want to go to Amazon to consume content.

I want to watch my dog and travel videos in the same app I'm learning about cool products. I don't like separate experiences.

We're seeing this same fragmentation in the crypto industry right now with NFT marketplaces. Every project is creating their own marketplace, which drives a fractured experience.

So Reason #1 it fails is that people just don't like coming to the Amazon app to watch videos.

Reason #2 is that they do come, but the content sucks.

I assume that Amazon will reward creators with a large affiliate fee and share of purchase in the beginning, but who knows.

If the content is corny and feels forced, Inspire will never gain true adoption.

Reason #3 is that the content quickly is gamed and met with bad actors.

It's kind of like reason #2 but even worse. It's that the content is so good that people are tricked into buying the wrong things.

Who's the real winner with Inspire?

The real winner is content creators.

The Amazon affiliate program was a big reason why solocreators in the early 2010s were able to survive on the internet.

The challenge used to be trying to drive distribution to the blogs and newsletters that contained affiliate links.

With Inspire, the distribution is done for you.

If designed like Tiktok, you could have zero followers everywhere else and Amazon will still serve your content up to millions of customers with the shortest possible path to conversion and affiliate revenue.

If I'm a creator that is able to produce short-form video, I am jumping all over this.

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