A couple of smaller thoughts this week
Hey
Apple has a decent-sized controversy on its hands over in-app payments. The culprit: an email client called Hey by a long-running, somewhat under the radar team. I don’t have insights on antitrust law, but the question I’m more interested in is “Why would anyone care about this email client?”
At a high-level, the product does the following
The first time you receive an email from someone, you screen if you wish to block them forever.
An “Imbox” for important emails and separate queues for newsletters and receipts
Reply later and set-aside queues
Privacy- centric features to block a lot of email/ad tracking
The privacy features are nice (and Google might struggle to emulate), but Outlook could embrace this more easily.
The issues with Hey – the lack of scale means some features like spam detection and anything algorithmic are likely to be worse than Gmail or Outlook. Only Hey.com email addresses are currently usable. If you have 100 important emails today for work, you still ultimately have 100 important emails today for work. There’s only so much you can do around the edges, and Superhuman covered that ground already.
Having watched the video demo, I admit it looks beautifully designed. There is a shade of “Superhuman” here (which I wrote about prior). The difference: Superhuman is laser focused on one goal. Hey feels like a collection of very nice features, less so a meaningful differentiated opportunity. Arguably this is the company to make Hey, as they do not take VC funding and are already wealthy.
American social media emulating WeChat
Three different companies all pursuing a similar vision.
Snapchat announced a broad redesign featuring multiple tabs and miniature apps in chat.
Facebook is adding some Wikipedia results to their search bar (to move to Google’s turf), and Messenger is piloting payments.
Google is “enhancing” their payments app to become a destination for booking rides and ordering food
Snapchat is the most overt move towards emulating WeChat and other Chinese apps, but all 3 companies are (have been) looking to becoming a Swiss-army knife super-app. Payments in particular is huge. So far this vision hasn’t taken off in the West, but COVID reset many things. Worth a shot.
Shopify Walmart
Shopify announced a second major partnership with Walmart (Facebook partnership prior). Top Shopify sellers will be added to Walmart’s seller marketplace. The move makes a ton of sense for Walmart, who is probably not that far off Amazon in first-party stock but lags in third-party marketplace sellers. Shopify is pursuing two threads at once
Shop app, payments, faster log-ins – Based on a world where Shopify storefronts are a destination in their own right
Facebook storefronts, Walmart marketplace – Based on a world where Shopify is the backend and giant platforms are the frontends.
Probably prudent to have multiple bets, but at some point these two visions are in opposition of each other.