
The inevitable has happened - rmason
https://om.co/2020/05/03/the-inevitable-has-happened/
======
ignoramous
(aside from _IT acceleration_ that is mentioned in the article):

From a consumer-tech PoV: TikTok and Instagram have also seen the biggest
gains. I see reviews of products and books, highlights of past sporting
events, short movies and stories, short-form memes and videos explode in
quantity. Instagram is now a Reddit and YouTube replacement rolled into one.
Instagram still doesn't quite have a good story around content-discovery, yet,
but it'll be interesting to see how their search and discovery changes in
response. They've got the UX chops in spades to pull such a thing off.
WhatsApp has rapidly replaced email, MMS, and SMS, but quite surprisingly is
also now a social network, a news aggregator, a blogging network all mashed up
into one. Everyone can get their opinions across or share opinions they think
are novel.

Tellingly, WhatsApp's competitor, Telegram is increasingly becoming a
PirateBay alternative. Netflix is in all households that can afford it, and
people previously averse to technology are using Chromecast / FireTV and
buying bigger TV sets to make good on their _Netflix_ usage.

I'm not sure about the US, but where I live, people are learning to cook
instead, partly out of fear of possible contamination spread through
restaurant deliveries.

Shopify (and its clones) are gaining popularity among small business owners,
as they desperately try to adopt technology in anticipation of an online-
first, post-covid world.

For other industries, WFH (or really, work-from-wherever-you-are) would
continue to gather steam and so, co-working spaces might see a jump, too. More
likely that highly distributed offices become a norm, with people working from
spaces closer to where they live. This might relieve a bit of pressure on
higher real-estate prices in urban centers. It'd be interesting, then, to see
how new-age tech-focused realty companies like zerodown, haus keep up with
changing times.

~~~
pxtail
> Instagram is now a Reddit and YouTube replacement

Nice joke, for me Instagram is a barren, walled wasteland when it comes to
valuable content, indexing and search seems to be non-existent from user
perspective and human is reduced to mindless consumer of mental equivalent of
fast-food served by algorithm - sparkling, shiny, low attention span, but
without much of substance.

For me it's disheartening and hard to comprehend how it can be presented as
replacement for services where you can learn almost anything,quite literally
build and furnish your house from the ground up, etc.

------
jhwang5
"Over the past few months, we have experienced the mainstreaming of
technology-enabled behavior previously thought of as being on the fringe.
Shopping for groceries online and having them delivered, for example, was
something of coastal luxury."

Food / grocery delivery is still to expensive to be the "norm", especially for
the middle class.

"It is not as if they had a choice. COVID-19 has exposed one harsh truth:
digital channels are more flexible and faster to adapt to change than physical
channels."

Yes. That being said, physical stores (after a CMBS crash) may get massively
underpriced coming out of this recession.

~~~
freeAgent
Food delivery is ridiculously expensive for what it offers me in added
convenience. I’m not even using it now, forget after COVID-19 has passed. I
actually enjoy getting to pick out the specific food I bring home from the
grocery store, and I have no trouble picking up my own food from a restaurant
(assuming I don’t want to eat out). I feel like a lot of these consumer
oriented gig services primarily increase intermediaries and cost for very
little benefit.

~~~
gowld
Food delivery is only expensive in money if you are rich in time. Some people
have more time than money, others vice versa.

Food delivery like expensive because it is combined with complicated meals,
which are expensive in their own right (again, if you are time rich).

------
op03
Tech CEO's and their never ending bullshit.

Its no surprise to me a brick and mortar CEO hasn't been quoted in the
article. I have stopped counting how many digital transformation projects have
gone no where in large non tech orgs.

Non-tech sector CEOs have zero choices. On the one hand they know well the
speed at which their orgs can adapt/change, while on the other they know they
have to pretend to everyone they can change at the speed at which tech does,
or they just get labeled outdated and loose their job.

~~~
dehrmann
Om Malik is a tech journalist-turned-VC. Not that that hurts your point.

