Eric Seufert
@eric_seufert
Analyst, Mobile Dev Memo: | Author, Freemium Economics (Elsevier) | Theseus: Per commercium virtus.
2.1K Following 48.9K Followers
My fav sharding lore is that the term likely comes from an evil wizard. Ultima Online was growing so fast in 1996 that they had to spread players across separate servers.
They wanted it to make sense in the story, so the designer dug through the original Ultima games from the 80s. At the end of Ultima I, a wizard traps the world in a crystal that gets shattered. So the story is that each "shard" holds a copy of the world.
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Agentic commerce is a mirage (part 3)
Agentic commerce is a mirage (part 3)
"Walmart’s quarterly earnings crystallize the distinction at the heart of this series. Shopping agents may only be viable, for a number of reasons, when they are controlled by retailers and integrated into their commerce stacks.
Agentic commerce is not disappearing, and, in fact, it has already demonstrated material commercial traction; it is simply being activated and absorbed by the retail platforms whose catalogs, customer data, recommendation systems, advertising businesses, and fulfillment infrastructure make it useful, rather than by independent agents."
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Penultimate is my second favorite word.
I think about this constantly.
There's that point in the arc of every former-tech-guy-turned-podcaster when you can feel their grip on actual product slip: hand-wavingly broad generalizations, lots of 'strategy' invoked, clever-sounding analogies to history or founders that are actually BS if you know the space (or the founder).
You can tell they haven't made an actual product decision or business tradeoff in years: the brain's gone slow and the muscles soft. They're just LARPing at this point to techie aspirants. Kind of like some venture partners pontificating authoritatively, and who've never run anything beyond a pitch meeting.
Happened today with a big-name podcaster/blogger....I can tell they're up in the performative clouds of predictable takes.
Tech is unforgiving. Nobody cares about ancient lore, you're only as good as your latest product or score. Either stay close to the metal and build, or depart with dignity and never look back. The in-between is embarrassing to watch.
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I'm in the midst of a cross-country move, so I wasn't able to watch this interview when it was published. I finally found the time for it this weekend, and it is truly phenomenal. Genuinely a tour de force of insight. I haven't encountered a more information-dense video in recent memory.
It also crystallizes Ben's role as the transcendent, towering technology analyst. I contend that no other person on Earth could go as deep across such a broad set of topics. He is an N of 1.
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My conversation with @benthompson. Ben has been writing Stratechery for over a decade and remains one of my favorite business thinkers.
We covered a lot. Every important company in the industry and the forces acting on all of them.
- Why he thinks it would be problematic for the US to win the AI race
- Will we run out of money to fund AI
- Google becoming Berkshire Hathaway
- Why ads are amazing
- TSMC, Intel, and Samsung
- Nvidia's invisible price cuts + biggest competitors
- Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Meta
I love talking to Ben about everything happening in markets and technology. Enjoy!
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
0:59 America and the AI Race
8:26 AI’s Funding Problem
15:31 AI’s Capabilities and Limits
20:30 Aggregation Theory, AI, and Ads
31:10 Compute, TSMC, and Intel
47:31 Amazon and Apple’s AI Moats
54:43 The Frontier AI Players
74:07 Nvidia and Commoditized Intelligence
82:52 What Survives an AI Bubble?
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Meta launches a business agent for ad campaigns
Apple forced to restructure ATT
There are levels of vibe coding.
Tomorrow, I'm interviewing everyone's favorite app marketing consultant, @Thomasbcn, for the next installment of the MDM Mailbag.
Submit your questions for Thomas here:
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Apple launches a unified campaign management API
Apple’s new EU App Store rules abandon per-install fees
Today would be a great day for someone to debunk the persistent myths about Apple Pay privacy! The topic deserves a full post, but here are two massive caveats to how Apple Pay’s privacy benefits are commonly described:
1. Apple Pay is pseudonymous, not anonymous. It uses a stable token for each card on each device. If a merchant links that token to your identity (through a loyalty card, email receipt, shipping address, etc.), it can identify your past and future purchases with that merchant whenever you use the same token.
2. Some of that pseudonymity has since been undermined by the payments industry with Payment Account Reference (PAR). It’s a stable, non-payment identifier that allows participating merchants and processors to recognize the same underlying card account across its physical card and associated Apple Pay tokens.
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Ohh there’s a good back story!
Walmart didn’t just “resist” Tap to Pay… they waged a full 12-year cold war against it starting the exact day Apple Pay launched in 2014.
They helped lead a secret retailer cartel called MCX that tried to kill Apple Pay with their own competing system called CurrentC, which spectacularly flopped and died.
The reason is data.
Apple Pay hides your card so the store never sees the real number or full identity.
Walmart Pay forces you into their app so every single item you buy is permanently linked to your profile.
They wanted surveillance more than customer convenience.
They lost!
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As always, it was fantastic to join Ben Thompson on the @stratechery podcast. We discussed the generative revolution in digital advertising, Meta’s communications challenges, the evolution of Google Search, Apple, AppLovin, and the components of a Prosperous Society.
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