Amazon and TikTok leave opening in next e-commerce boom

tech.hindustantimes.com:

I'm not totally yet sold on the idea of “social commerce.” The concept, already big in Asia, takes what was previously the role of the grinning influencer class and scales it out to just about everyone. Buy a product, make a video convincing your friends to buy it, make money, repeat. Icky, I think. The future, analysts say, is a $100 billion market by 2025.

In the US, capturing this opportunity is said to be a battle between two existing giants, in which each player has what the other wants. Amazon.com Inc. has shopping but no compelling social platform. ByteDance Ltd.'s TikTok has that addictive social secret sauce but has made only limited inroads into shopping. Both are hard at work trying to solve their shortcomings.

But a potential new player has emerged in this world: Flip. A scrappier upstart, co-founded by 37-year-old Iraqi refugee Noor Agha, Flip has so far received little mainstream attention but in certain circles is creating a buzz unlike any app I've encountered for a while. By not having an existing business to protect, the Flip app is trying to fix a few e-commerce frustrations. It may also be an interesting test case: At a time of scrutiny over the power of big tech platforms, can a newcomer with new ideas actually compete against deep-pocketed incumbents?

Flip works much like TikTok. The user sees a vertical video and browses through by swiping up from one clip to the next. All of the posts are about products that can be bought directly through an “add to cart” button on the video. A counter in the top right corner displays a dollar amount that increases by a few cents with each video watched — the amount can be applied as a discount. 

Traction for Flip comes thanks to a recent aggressive viral referral