"Push Notifications for Chewbacca Bobble Heads"

May 16, 2018

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Main Takeaways:

Baked by Melissa gives away 100,000 cupcakes to prove love and sugary treats really do win.
Oculus Go is better than a party trick.
Instagram decides that they want more than just dopamine-fueled likes from their users.
Amazon vs. Alibaba, who will win the battle of the commerce giants?
Did the world peak in the mid 90's?
Now we can all recognize all the Royal Wedding guests.

Phillip was the MC for Magento Imagine, which is supremely cool.
Phillip was so excited to be able to be able to share the stage with the esteemable Sucharita Kodali.
On a slight side note: Phillip also got to interview Melissa Ben-Ishay on her business and how Baked By Melissa gave away 100,000 cupcakes in their #sidewithlove campaign, and to spread love and kindness.
Also: Phillip opened a merch store on his other podcast to raise awareness about mental health, with all the proceeds going to Open Sourcing Mental Illness.

Brian is super excited about this, and apparently so is the President of Sony, and everyone else.
Could most of the hype surrounding Oculus be because of its price point?
Brian and Phillip agree that Oculus is well.. good for what it is, entry level VR.
One of the ways that this kind of tech would be incredibly valuable
Verge Cast has a great review of Oculus Go.
One of the ways that Oculus or similar technology can be really valuable is in the commerce space, in which basic level VR could be utilized to bring the storefront to the convenience of a customer's home or increase the value of an in-store experience.
Brian is ready to go out and purchase an Oculus Go, Philip was three seconds away from buying one.
Brian really doesn't want to hand his data over to Facebook.

Phillip decides that calling it "The Gram" might actually be worse than people who say "Insta".
Instagram has been steadily adding commerce features for a while, including Instagram business features, and shoppable, but now purchasing through Instagram is much simpler.
Now, nstagram will allow users to purchase directly through the Instagram app, and allow for payment information to be entered in the app.
Basically, feel free to shop in the privacy of Facebook's data centers.
Brian wonders if David Marcus had anything to do with this.
Phillip says that this will just cut out the middleman, because before people would just purchase products they saw on Instagram off of the Amazon website.
Will this hurt Amazon?
Spoiler alert: Phillip is a baby hypebeast with folders full of sneakers.

Amazon seems to be simultaneously sending push notifications for Chewbacca bobbleheads and trying to make Snapchat (spark) a thing (it's never going to be a thing) for some reason.
If Amazon would bring Amazon pay into Instagram, then Phillip's life would be complete.
Amazon is also trying to go after Alibaba, by picking up the tab for new merchants.
Phillip says that it would be interesting to have Amazon pay buttons all over the internet, so that people could experience brands on Amazon even if the entire catalogue wasn't on Amazon.
Check out Eric Broussard Keynote from Magento Imagine to better understand this.
Everyone seems to have a different understanding of what Amazon actually is: music, streaming, echo? Or is Amazon two-day shipping?
The price increase in prime seems to be the end of the world, Phillip is going to beat Amazon at its own game by buying more things on Amazon.
The amount of Amazon prime users has reached 90MM people, and has exceeded any other voting bloc, including evangelicals.
"Your customer is Amazon's customer".
Brian can still not comment on anything Amazon related.

Life seems pretty peachy for those born after the year 2000, especially regarding commerce.
Brian says people born in the 2000's are growing up in a post-Amazon world, where they can order anything and have it shipped in two days.
Brian also predicts that Phillip's shoe addiction might be long-lasting.
Phillip laments that he cannot get the sneakers he wants within two days, proving that Amazon prime may have spoiled everyone's shipping expectations forever.
Also: Phillip describes how ordering shoes used to work: and the process sounds both terrifying and exhausting.
Was there even a life before smartphones?
Bar banter is no longer a thing, which is kind of sad.
All TV world problems have already been solved.

Sky News has decided to make the royal wedding a bit more entertaining, by using facial recognition & AI to let everyone know who's who at Meghan Markle's upcoming wedding to Prince Harry.
This will be powered by Amazon's recognition cloud-based machine learning tool.
Phillip finds this all fascinating.
Brian says that this type of technology is an excellent opportunity for commerce and really could change the world.
Maybe the future of smart TV's is personalized context.
Brian cannot wait until Linkedin gets facial recognition so he can know everything about everyone when he goes to a conference.

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