Many have argued that these announcements are related to each other: Shopify needs to build a customer-facing application in order to take-on Facebook, and the announcement of Facebook Shops is why. My takeaway is the opposite: the inevitability of Facebook Shops — thanks in part to a surprising culprit — is precisely why Shopify should not spend m... See more

Facebook Shops is a perfect example: it is going to succeed because it is good for Shopify’s merchants, but the reason it is good for Shopify’s merchants is because Facebook and Apple effectively teamed up to make it impossible for Shopify to fix the payment problem on their own.

Livestream sellers put forward their point of view and editorial eye on the products they select and evaluate. Facebook Shops and Tik Tok Shopping similarly give opportunity to sellers of all stripes to set up their shops.

In a landscape where customer attention is the scarcest resource, Shopify’s very identity as a neutral platform and invisible infrastructure is perhaps both its greatest asset and its greatest limitation.