Influencers are the future of discovery-driven, brand-centric commerce. This means that they’re juxtaposed to Amazon and search-driven, brand-agnostic commerce. Picks and shovels like Shopify and Stripe enable influencer commerce.

Indeed, in the increasingly commercialized, social media-focused, and sprawling internet environment of the early 2010s, the notion of “digital influence” became an efficient means of identifying people’s value: amid the immense noise of social media content, who should be singled out as worth listening to, what should they say to obtain and mainta

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The archetypal influencer produces life-style porn of one form or another, playing up the aspirational glamour of their own home or meals or vacations. The new wave of curators is more outward-looking, borrowing from the influencer’s playbook and piggybacking on social media’s intimate interaction with followers in order to address a body of cultur... See more

In my view, however, the business of influencer bundling has only just begun. Curators are the new creators, and as consumers, we’re going to be willing to pay someone with good taste to help us sort through the ever-growing mass of information at our fingertips.