Ideaforge

“Unmortgage enables everyone to live in the home they want to, that’s our mission,” Unmortgage co-founder and CEO Ray Rafiq-Omar tells me. “We do that by allowing people to buy as little as five percent of a home and rent the rest. So there’s no mortgage involved, hence the name Unmortgage”.

The burgeoning London startup, which aims to launch next year having just closed a hefty £10 million seed round, calls its model “part-own, part-rent”. However, unlike traditional shared ownership schemes, Unmortgage doesn’t want you to have to take out a mortgage to buy the first portion of your own, and it isn’t targeting new-builds.

Like a number of other fintech/proptech companies, such as Strideup and Proportunity, it is the latest attempt to solve the increasing difficulty first time buyers face trying to get on the housing ladder as rising house prices typically outstrip wages. If people rent, they often cannot save the large deposit required for a mortgage. It is this “vicious circle” that Unmortgage want to break: by helping families that can afford to rent gradually buy a home.

“The way we like to think about it is the security of home ownership with the flexibility of renting,” says Rafiq-Omar. “You find a home. If we like it too, we’ll but it together in partnership. You’ll own your bit and you’ll pay rent on our bit. Then you have the option to buy more of your home from as little as a pound at any time”.

To keeps things fair — Rafiq-Omar stresses that fairness is “our core value” — Unmortgage will revalue the property on a monthly basis so you’ll always have an up-to-date valuation when increasing your stake. And at any point you are free to either buy out Unmortgage with a mortgage or an inheritance or to give the company three month’s notice for it to buy you out so you can take your cash at market price and move on to your next home.

Likewise, the rent you pay on the part of the property you don’t own is pegged to rises to inflation. But in case inflation outpaces market rate rents, Rafiq-Omar says Unmortgage will allow the customer to ask for a rent review. “They have the ability to not have to worry about their rent but if they are worried they can have it reviewed,” he says.

Unmortgage will use institutional funding to finance its part of the homes it purchases, who Rafiq-Omar says would like to own residential property, and the secure income stream it brings, but don’t want to be landlords or end up in the media for behaving like a landlord. “Unmortgage gives them a way to invest in residential property while solving societal need, which is [that] people want to own their own homes and have security over their housing situation”.

Meanwhile, investors in Unmortgage’s seed round are fintech venture capital firms Anthemis Exponential Ventures, and Augmentum Fintech plc. “”We’re grateful to our investors for believing in us and our social mission and excited to be working with them – especially Tee Pruitt [of Anthemis], who was instrumental through much of this process,” adds Rafiq-Omar.

Source: Tech Crunch

Reports of Jack Ma’s impending retirement are greatly exaggerated, it seems. Ma, the co-founder and executive chairman of Alibaba, has pushed back on claims that he is on the cusp of leaving the $420 billion Chinese e-commerce firm.

The New York Times first reported that the entrepreneur plans to announce that he will leave the firm to pursue philanthropy in education, a topic he is passionate about — Ma is a former teacher. But that news was quickly rebutted after Ma gave an interview to the South China Morning Post — the media company that Alibaba bought in 2016 — in which he explained that he plans to gradually phase himself out of the company through a succession plan.

When reached for comment, Alibaba pointed TechCrunch to the SCMP report which claims Ma’s strategy will “provide [leadership] transition plans over a significant period of time.”

In order words, Ma isn’t abruptly leaving the company, but it seems that his role will be gradually reduced over time. Alibaba confirmed he’ll remain a part of the company while the succession plan is carried out. The exact details will be announced on Ma’s birthday, September 10.

That transition isn’t a new development. Ma stepped back from a daily role when he moved from CEO to chairman in 2013. Speaking at the time, he said that he would remain active and that it was “impossible” for him to retire but he did concede that younger people with fresher ideas should lead the business.

That’s exactly what has happened in the preceding years.

13-year Alibaba veteran Jonathan Lu stepped into Ma’s shoes as CEO. He led Alibaba when it went public in a record $25 billion IPO in 2015, but he was replaced in 2015 by Daniel Zhang after reportedly losing Ma’s confidence. Former COO Zhang leads the company today, although Ma’s presence still looms large and he is particularly involved in the political side of the business. That’s included a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, and various activities with national leaders in markets like Southeast Asia, where Alibaba has sought to leverage the colossal size of its business to make inroads in emerging markets and position its business for growth as internet access continues to increase.

“I sat down with our senior executives 10 years ago, and asked what Alibaba would do without me,” Ma told SCMP in an interview. “I’m very proud that Alibaba now has the structure, corporate culture, governance and system for grooming talent that allows me to step away without causing disruption.”

Source: Tech Crunch

Another domino has fallen in Alex Jones’ media empire. Apple this week announced that it’s pulled the controversial conspiracy theorist/provocateur from the App Store this week, banning the Infowars app over violations to its “objectionable content” rules.

Slightly more specifically, the host was determined to have violated the TOS around “defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content, including references or commentary about religion, race, sexual orientation, gender, national/ethnic origin, or other targeted groups, particularly if the app is likely to humiliate, intimidate, or place a targeted individual or group in harm’s way.”

There’s been a cascade effect with many of the major platforms Jones has used to distribute his video content. Facebook, Google and Spotify have all pulled Infowars content from their respective platforms. This week, Twitter and Periscope banned him after widespread criticism.

Among other controversial comments, Jones has come under fire for suggesting that the Sandy Hook shooting, which resulted in the deaths of 20 elementary school students, was a hoax.

We’ve reached out to Apple for comment.

Source: Tech Crunch

European Union lawmakers are facing a major vote on digital copyright reform proposals on Wednesday — a process that has set the Internet’s hair fully on fire.

Here’s a run down of the issues and what’s at stake…

Article 13

The most controversial component of the proposals concerns user-generated content platforms such as YouTube, and the idea they should be made liable for copyright infringements committed by their users — instead of the current regime of takedowns after the fact (which locks rights holders into having to constantly monitor and report violations — y’know, at the same time as Alphabet’s ad business continues to roll around in dollars and eyeballs).

Critics of the proposal argue that shifting the burden of rights liability onto platforms will flip them from champions to chillers of free speech, making them reconfigure their systems to accommodate the new level of business risk.

More specifically they suggest it will encourage platforms into algorithmically pre-filtering all user uploads — aka #censorshipmachines — and then blinkered AIs will end up blocking fair use content, cool satire, funny memes etc etc, and the free Internet as we know it will cease to exist.

Backers of the proposal see it differently, of course. These people tend to be creatives whose professional existence depends upon being paid for the sharable content they create, such as musicians, authors, filmmakers and so on.

Their counter argument is that, as it stands, their hard work is being ripped off because they are not being fairly recompensed for it.

Consumers may be the ones technically freeloading by uploading and consuming others’ works without paying to do so but creative industries point out it’s the tech giants that are gaining the most money from this exploitation of the current rights rules — because they’re the only ones making really fat profits off of other people’s acts of expression. (Alphabet, Google’s ad giant parent, made $31.16BN in revenue in Q1 this year alone, for example.)

YouTube has been a prime target for musicians’ ire — who contend that the royalties the company pays them for streaming their content are simply not fair recompense.

Article 11

The second controversy attached to the copyright reform concerns the use of snippets of news content.

European lawmakers want to extend digital copyright to also cover the ledes of news stories which aggregators such as Google News typically ingest and display — because, again, the likes of Alphabet is profiting off of bits of others’ professional work without paying them to do so. And, on the flip side, media firms have seen their profits hammered by the Internet serving up free content.

The reforms would seek to compensate publishers for their investment in journalism by letting them charge for use of these text snippets — instead of only being ‘paid’ in traffic (i.e. by becoming yet more eyeball fodder in Alphabet’s aggregators).

Critics don’t see it that way of course. They see it as an imposition on digital sharing — branding the proposal a “link tax” and arguing it will have a wider chilling effect of interfering with the sharing of hyperlinks.

They argue that because links can also contain words of the content being linked to. And much debate has raged over on how the law would (or could) define what is and isn’t a protected text snippet.

They also claim the auxiliary copyright idea hasn’t worked where it’s already been tried (in Germany and Spain). Google just closed its News aggregator in the latter market, for example. Though at the pan-EU level it would have to at least pause before taking a unilateral decision to shutter an entire product.

Germany’s influential media industry is a major force behind Article 11. But in Germany a local version of a snippet law that was passed in 2013 ended up being watered down — so news aggregators were not forced to pay for using snippets, as had originally been floated.

Without mandatory payment (as is the case in Spain) the law has essentially pitted publishers against each other. This is because Google said it would not pay and also changed how it indexes content for Google News in Germany to make it opt-in only.

That means any local publishers that don’t agree to zero-license their snippets to Google risk losing visibility to rivals that do. So major German publishers have continued to hand their snippets over to Google.

But they appear to believe a pan-EU law might manage to tip the balance of power. Hence Article 11.

Awful amounts of screaming

For critics of the reforms, who often sit on the nerdier side of the spectrum, their reaction can be summed up by a screamed refrain that IT’S THE END OF THE FREE WEB AS WE KNOW IT.

WikiMedia has warned that the reform threatens the “vibrant free web”.

A coalition of original Internet architects, computer scientists, academics and others — including the likes of world wide web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee, security veteran Bruce Schneier, Google chief evangelist Vint Cerf, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and entrepreneur Mitch Kapor — also penned an open letter to the European Parliament’s president to oppose Article 13.

In it they wrote that while “well-intended” the push towards automatic pre-filtering of users uploads “takes an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the Internet from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users”.

There is more than a little irony there, though, given that (for example) Google’s ad business conducts automated surveillance of the users of its various platforms for ad targeting purposes — and through that process it’s hoping to control the buying behavior of the individuals it tracks.

At the same time as so much sound and fury has been directed at attacking the copyright reform plans, another very irate, very motivated group of people have been lustily bellowing that content creators need paying for all the free lunches that tech giants (and others) have been helping themselves to.

But the death of memes! The end of fair digital use! The demise of online satire! The smothering of Internet expression! Hideously crushed and disfigured under the jackboot of the EU’s evil Filternet!

And so on and on it has gone.

(For just one e.g., see the below video — which was actually made by an Australian satirical film and media company that usually spends its time spoofing its own government’s initiatives but evidently saw richly viral pickings here… )

For a counter example, to set against the less than nuanced yet highly sharable satire-as-hyperbole on show in that video, is the Society of Authors — which has written a 12-point breakdown defending the actual substance of the reform (at least as it sees it).

A topline point to make right off the bat is it’s hardly a fair fight to set words against a virally sharable satirical video fronted by a young lady sporting very pink lipstick. But, nonetheless, debunk the denouncers these authors valiantly attempt to.

To wit: They reject claims the reforms will kill hyperlinking or knife sharing in the back; or do for online encyclopedias like Wikimedia; or make snuff out of memes; or strangle free expression — pointing out that explicit exceptions that have been written in to qualify what it would (and would not) target and how it’s intended to operate in practice.

Wikipedia, for example, has been explicitly stated as being excluded from the proposals.

But they are still pushing water uphill — against the tsunami of DEATH OF THE MEMES memes pouring the other way.

Russian state propaganda mouthpiece RT has even joined in the fun, because of course Putin is no fan of EU…

Terrible amounts of lobbying

The Society of Authors makes the very pertinent point that tech giants have spent millions lobbying against the reforms. They also argue this campaign has been characterised by “a loop of misinformation and scaremongering”.

So, basically, Google et al stand accused of spreading (even more) fake news with a self-interested flavor. Who’d have thunk it?!

The EU’s (voluntary) Transparency Register records Google directly spending between $6M and $6.4M on regional lobbying activities in 2016 alone. (Although that covers not just copyright related lobbying but a full laundry list of “fields of interest” its team of 14 smooth-talking staffers apply their Little Fingers to.)

But the company also seeks to exert influence on EU political opinion via membership of additional lobbying organizations.

And the register lists a full TWENTY-FOUR organizations that Google is therefore also speaking through (by contrast, Facebook is merely a member of eleven bodies) — from the American chamber of Commerce to the EU to dry-sounding thinktanks, such as the Center for European Policy Studies and the European Policy Center. It is also embedded in startup associations, like Allied for Startups. And various startup angles have been argued by critics of the copyright reforms — claiming Europe is going to saddle local entrepreneurs with extra bureaucracy.

Google’s dense web of presence across tech policy influencers and associations amplifies the company’s regional lobbying spend to as much as $36M, music industry bosses contend.

Though again that dollar value would be spread across multiple GOOG interests — so it’s hard to sum the specific copyright lobbying bill. (We asked Google — it didn’t answer). Multiple millions looks undeniable though.

Of course the music industry and publishers have been lobbying too.

But probably not at such a high dollar value. Though Europe’s creative industries have the local contacts and cultural connections to bend EU politicians’ ears. (As, well, they probably should.)

Seasoned European commissioners have professed themselves astonished at the level of lobbying — and that really is saying something.

Yes there are actually two sides to consider…

Returning to the Society of Authors, here’s the bottom third of their points — which focus on countering the copyright reform critics’ counterarguments:

The proposals aren’t censorship: that’s the very opposite of what most journalists, authors, photographers, film-makers and many other creators devote their lives to.

Not allowing creators to make a living from their work is the real threat to freedom of expression.

Not allowing creators to make a living from their work is the real threat to the free flow of information online.

Not allowing creators to make a living from their work is the real threat to everyone’s digital creativity.

Stopping the directive would be a victory for multinational internet giants at the expense of all those who make, enjoy and enjoy using creative works.

Certainly some food for thought there.

But as entrenched, opposing positions go, it’s hard to find two more perfect examples.

And with such violently opposed and motivated interest groups attached to the copyright reform issue there hasn’t really been much in the way of considered debate or nuanced consideration on show publicly.

But being exposed to endless DEATH OF THE INTERNET memes does tend to have that effect.

What’s that about Article 3 and AI?

There is also debate about Article 3 of the copyright reform plan — which concerns text and data-mining. (Or TDM as the Commission sexily conflates it.)

The original TDM proposal, which was rejected by MEPs, would have limited data mining to research organisations for the purposes of scientific research (though Member States would have been able to choose to allow other groups if they wished).

This portion of the reforms has attracted less attention (butm again, it’s difficult to be heard above screams about dead memes). Though there have been concerns raised from certain quarters that it could impact startup innovation — by throwing up barriers to training and developing AIs by putting rights blocks around (otherwise public) data-sets that could (otherwise) be ingested and used to foster algorithms.

Or that “without an effective data mining policy, startups and innovators in Europe will run dry”, as a recent piece of sponsored content inserted into Politico put it.

That paid for content was written by — you guessed it! — Allied for Startups.

Aka the organization that counts Google as a member…

The most fervent critics of the copyright reform proposals — i.e. those who would prefer to see a pro-Internet-freedoms overhaul of digital copyright rules — support a ‘right to read is the right to mine’ style approach on this front.

So basically a free for all — to turn almost any data into algorithmic insights. (Presumably these folks would agree with this kind of thing.)

Middle ground positions which are among the potential amendments now being considered by MEPs would support some free text and data mining — but, where legal restrictions exist, then there would be licenses allowing for extractions and reproductions.

 

And now the amendments, all 252 of them…

The whole charged copyright saga has delivered one bit of political drama already —  when the European Parliament voted in July to block proposals agreed only by the legal affairs committee, thereby reopening the text for amendments and fresh votes.

So MEPs now have the chance to refine the parliament’s position via supporting select amendments — with that vote taking place next week.

And boy have the amendments flooded in.

There are 252 in all! Which just goes to show how gloriously messy the democratic process is.

It also suggests the copyright reform could get entirely stuck — if parliamentarians can’t agree on a compromise position which can then be put to the European Council and go on to secure final pan-EU agreement.

MEP Julia Reda, a member of The Greens–European Free Alliance, who as (also) a Pirate Party member is very firmly opposed to the copyright reform text as was voted in July (she wants a pro-web-freedoms overhauling of digital copyright rules), has created this breakdown of alternative options tabled by MEPs — seen through her lens of promoting Internet freedoms over rights extensions.

So, for example, she argues that amendments to add limited exceptions for platform liability would still constitute “upload filters” (and therefore “censorship machines”).

Her preference would be deleting the article entirely and making no change to the current law. (Albeit that’s not likely to be a majority position, given how many MEPs backed the original Juri text of the copyright reform proposals 278 voted in favor, losing out to 318 against.)

But she concedes that limiting the scope of liability to only music and video hosting platforms would be “a step in the right direction, saving a lot of other platforms (forums, public chats, source code repositories, etc.) from negative consequences”.

She also flags an interesting suggestion — via another tabled amendment — of “outsourcing” the inspection of published content to rightholders via an API”.

“With a fair process in place [it] is an interesting idea, and certainly much better than general liability. However, it would still be challenging for startups to implement,” she adds.

Reda has also tabled a series of additional amendments to try to roll back what she characterizes as “some bad decisions narrowly made by the Legal Affairs Committee” — including adding a copyright exception for user generated content (which would essentially get platforms off the hook insofar as rights infringements by web users are concerned); adding an exception for freedom of panorama (aka the taking and sharing of photos in public places, which is currently not allowed in all EU Member States); and another removing a proposed extra copyright added by the Juri committee to cover sports events — which she contends would “filter fan culture away“.

So is the free Internet about to end??

MEP Catherine Stihler, a member of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, who also voted in July to reopen debate over the reforms reckons nearly every parliamentary group is split — ergo the vote is hard to call.

“It is going to be an interesting vote,” she tells TechCrunch. “We will see if any possible compromise at the last minute can be reached but in the end parliament will decide which direction the future of not just copyright but how EU citizens will use the internet and their rights on-line.

“Make no mistake, this vote affects each one of us. I do hope that balance will be struck and EU citizens fundamental rights protected.”

So that sort of sounds like a ‘maybe the Internet as you know it will change’ then.

Other views are available, though, depending on the MEP you ask.

We reached out to Axel Voss, who led the copyright reform process for the Juri committee, and is a big proponent of Article 13, Article 11 (and the rest), to ask if he sees value in the debate having been reopened rather than fast-tracked into EU law — to have a chance for parliamentarians to achieve a more balanced compromise. At the time of writing Voss hadn’t responded.

Voting to reopen the debate in July, Stihler argued there are “real concerns” about the impact of Article 13 on freedom of expression, as well as flagging the degree of consumer concern parliamentarians had been seeing over the issue (doubtless helped by all those memes + petitions), adding: “We owe it to the experts, stakeholders and citizens to give this directive the full debate necessary to achieve broad support.”

MEP Marietje Schaake, a member of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, was willing to hazard a politician’s prediction that the proposals will be improved via the democratic process — albeit, what would constitute an improvement here of course depends on which side of the argument you stand.

But she’s routing for exceptions for user generated content and additional refinements to the three debated articles to narrow their scope.

Her spokesman told us: “I think we’ll end up with new exceptions on user generated content and freedom of panorama, as well as better wording for article 3 on text and data mining. We’ll end up probably with better versions of articles 11 and 13, the extent of the improvement will depend on the final vote.”

The vote will be held during an afternoon plenary session on September 12.

So yes there’s still time to call your MEP.

Source: Tech Crunch

Another day, another whopper of a tariff. The Trump administration has been busy finalizing the rulemaking process to put 25% tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods, which will almost certainly affect the prices of many critical technology components and have on-going repercussions for Silicon Valley supply chains. That followed the implementation of tariffs on $50 billion of goods earlier this year.

Now, President Trump, as reported by reporters on Air Force One this morning, has said that he is prepared to triple down on his tariffs strategy, saying that he is ready to add tariffs to another $267 billion worth of Chinese goods. Although the president has a flair for the dramatic in many of his policies, the China tariffs are one arena in which his rhetoric has matched the actions of his administration.

Each set of these tariffs have been vociferously opposed by tech industry trade groups, but their concerns seem to have had little effect on the administration’s final thinking. Jose Castaneda, a spokesperson for the Information Technology Industry Council, called this next wave of potential tariffs “grossly irresponsible and possibly illegal.”

Yet, despite the constant threat of more tariffs, CFIUS reforms, and the ZTE debacle, China continues to dominate trade with America. Numbers released by the Department of Commerce this week showed that America’s trade deficit with other nations reached five-year highs in July, surpassing $50 billion for the month, with the China trade goods deficit hitting $36.8 billion. These numbers may well have triggered the president’s latest comments.

They may also have been triggered by the recent anonymous op-ed in the New York Times, in which a Trump “senior administration official” said that “Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people….In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the ‘enemy of the people,’ President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.”

Anti-trade or not, it is clear that the package of tariffs and other policy reforms have done little to dampen the trade deficit or trigger a broad restructuring of the supply chains underpinning American brands.

In my discussions at the Disrupt SF 2018 conference the past few days, one persistent theme has been the durability of certain Chinese cities — particularly Shenzhen but not exclusively — to weather these trade storms. The depth of expertise, fast turnaround times, extreme flexibility, and cheap costs of hardware supply chains there are sustainable advantages that the U.S. can’t hope to fight with a couple of measly tariffs — even on $500 billion worth of goods.

Indeed, as one prominent venture capitalist put it to me, hardware investing is now significantly easier for those with the right knowledge of the Chinese ecosystem. Just a few years ago, a couple of millions in capital could get a startup a working prototype. Now, startups can raise $1-2 million in some cases and get a working product into sales channels. The Chinese ecosystem around hardware has just continued to improve with alacrity.

For Trump, a much more robust policy will be needed to move the trade numbers in the other direction. Better funding for universities to produce the right talent. Pushing for a region in the U.S. to become the “Shenzhen of America” through a combination of private and public funding. Greater preferential treatment around taxes for keeping manufacturing in the U.S.

And maybe tariff the hell out of them.

Source: Tech Crunch

E-commerce beauty startup founder, Glossier CEO Emily Weiss, dished on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018 this morning about some of the company’s top competitors in the e-commerce space, including Amazon as well as the forthcoming threat from Instagram – which is building out its own standalone shopping app, according to reports. 

Glossier, founded in 2014 and backed by $87 million, has created a massive beauty brand that’s now a household name among women. And it’s done so without being on Amazon.

The company doesn’t work with Amazon, and Weiss said that it doesn’t intend to.

When asked if the company would sell into Amazon, she responded with an emphatic “no, no, no.”

Glossier may have been acquisition target for Amazon, however – when asked if Amazon ever approached Glossier about about a deal, Weiss didn’t deny it, but instead demurred, “a lot of people have approached Glossier,” before quickly moving on.

Weiss, clearly, doesn’t think that Amazon is the best place for beauty brands.

“The interesting thing about Amazon and how they’ve addressed obviously one of the biggest consumer needs, which is solving buying, is that in the process, in some ways, they’ve kind of killed shopping,” Weiss said.

“I think in terms of breadth of product, obviously, no one will ever beat them. They have done the most phenomenal job,” she continued.

But going to Amazon for everything, every time doesn’t make sense, she believes. It’s only one kind of shopping experience.

And even though Amazon is massive, it doesn’t mean there’s no room for others outside of its shadow to grow.

“E-commerce is 10% of global commerce – that’s nothing,” Weiss pointed out. “We are at the dawn of e-commerce, and this is one user experience,” she said, referring to Amazon.

Plus, Amazon’s user experience may not be the best fit for beauty and fashion products – even though Amazon is quickly ramping up in those areas with its own private labels, Amazon Fashion, Prime Wardrobe, beauty boxes, and other initiatives.

“I think it’s exciting that we are really at the dawn of  e-commerce, and that there’s going to be so many paradigms. What we’re focused on building is an emotional commerce experience which is focused on a breath of connection, and not a breath of product,” Weiss explained.

While Glossier may not be on Amazon, it does leverage Instagram to reach customers, possibly making Instagram’s shopping app a bigger rival, if launched.

“It makes sense,” Weiss said, when asked her thoughts about Instagram’s plans in this space. “72% of millennials make their purchasing decisions for beauty and fashion products through Instagram,” she said.

Glossier itself has a long history with Instagram. It launched on Instagram before it even had its website up, for example. They also just hired Keith Peiris, who led DMs and Camera at Instagram, as Head of Product.

“Instagram’s an incredible tool,” Weiss admitted, but also cautioned that it could still face difficulties as a shopping app.

“I think of the challenges might be these platforms were not built around specific topics, they were built around specific media expressions,” said Weiss.

That said, Instagram could have more potential in the beauty market than Amazon.

“When you look at a platform like Amazon, no woman has ever told me that their criteria for best mascara was what was fastest or cheapest. That’s not how people are buying emotional things – like a fashion or beauty product,” said Weiss. “But the leading paradigm of what an e-commerce experience gives you is one of efficiency, and one of breadth of product. When what users are actually doing and wanting is one of breadth of connection,” she said.

 

Source: Tech Crunch