The Facebook of ecommerce — Benedict Evans

It is well understood that the internet has created extraordinary abundance in information and products. Whereas once, consumers might have been restricted to their town paper for information and local mall for apparel, they can now find functionally unlimited amounts of both online.

The Internet changes all of that: now articles and videos are simply digital bits, easily created and easily transmitted anywhere on the globe, effectively for free. Physical goods still need to be made, but they can be sold to anyone by anyone, and shelf space has been replaced by the commoditized cardboard box.

"All parts of our economy were previously based on scarcity. In almost every case, that scarcity has disappeared. The way you win on the internet is to be the starting place where people go - Google, Facebook, these aggregators - or you're highly differentiated and you leverage the fact that you have zero distribution to reach anyone."