The problem with everyone getting into "pay your friends" is that everyone wants to be paid in a different way and you need a dozen different accounts. And it seems like everyone wants to help you pay your friends these days.
This is fully generalizable to all kinds of software nowadays.
The problem with everyone getting into "[SOFTWARE PRODUCT]" is that everyone wants to [DO THIS SOFTWARE THING] in a different way and you need a dozen different accounts. And it seems like everyone wants to help you [DO THIS SOFTWARE THING] these days.
It’s like Beta vs VHS, with 3-20 incompatible competitors, over and over and over for eternity.
"… experiments start small and grow over time … Amazon creates a small team to experiment with the idea and find out if it’s viable. Bezos famously instituted the “two-pizza team” rule, which says that teams should be small enough to be fed with two pizzas … new teams get limited funding and clear milestones; if a team succeeds in smaller challenges, it’s given more resources and a larger challenge to tackle.
… Amazon doesn’t spend too much time on internal testing. “They prioritize launching early over everything else,” … Bezos has been fanatical about letting teams operate independently of one another … discouraged the kind of standardization you see at companies like Google and Apple, encouraging teams to operate independently using whatever technology makes the most sense … to make Amazon a modular, flexible organization with a minimum of company-wide policies.
That has made Amazon’s internal culture somewhat chaotic and balkanized. An engineer on one Amazon project can’t easily jump to another the way they can at Google or Apple. Friction between teams with different cultures may explain why some people find Amazon a stressful place to work. But this chaotic culture is also hospitable to innovation. A new team can use the tools and processes that make the most sense instead of feeling pressure to conform to company-wide standards."
Amazon as a whole is willing to try things that might fail[1]. Yes I work at Amazon, yes it sounds a bit cultish, so be it. When people aren't afraid of losing their jobs because of one product misstep it's a lot easier to deliver stuff quickly. Instead of getting bogged down in endless meetings debating hypotheticals you can ship an MVP and get real customer feedback about whether the decision was correct. Every company pays lip service to taking smart risks but few actually follow through on it.
From what I know have seen some of this is just an illusion. Alexa has been around for a while. The idea must have been around for a while. It probably doesn't take them any less than it'd take anyone. I don't think there's a mystery to the engineering side.
"Amazon's Next Mission" is just marketing speak.
To their credit, they are willing to invest in expanding their products and finding adjacent markets. That's really hard for companies to do and where Amazon seems a little different in the way they don't seem to care at all about profit. If you don't care about profit you can do a lot of things that otherwise are difficult.
While I’ve never used any of these services (I just use cash, or a bank transfer if someone pays for hotel rooms or something), surely most use-cases are when out and about, not when in the living room with your talking speaker thing?
Not all of them actually pan out. Similar story for Etsy competition. (Amazon launched "handmade" in 2015 and kinda maybe relaunched last year. It might have more success this time).
Amazon might have a better time trying to buy PayPal (for venmo) or Square (for Cash App and to compete in the field they already gave up on). It would be amusing if this announcement was calculated to hit their stock price for a cheaper acquisition. That's probably way too cheeky, but for a lot of markets, Amazon has had more success acquiring than building their own.
It is much easier to do it through Alexa than let’s say HN. It ties to an account with each person and they are all known to the company. Payments are scary between strangers. The more data you have, the cheaper you can process safely.
Nope, it's an everyone young people under 25 (or so) thing.
The payments holy trinity is Venmo, Tab, and Splitwise.
Tab is for splitting specific checks with easy itemization and multi-person selection + easy tip calculations, connects with Venmo. Mobile app only.
Splitwise is great for running tabs, traveling in groups, or complex splits. Keeps track of who paid and who split and even simplifies to the fewest number of payments, of course also done by Venmo. Great desktop site with a good mobile app as well.
The only thing I'm waiting for is to import a Tab bill into Splitwise!
But Square's Cash App has been gaining ground and is now more popular in some southern states. The ability to get a debit card hugely increases the value to the under-banked. It also makes generating revenue much easier for Square.
Right now, Cash app has been #1 in iTunes finance section for a few months and is consistently ahead in Google play's free app ranking.
In a Hacker News spirit - wait for an article titled “malware screaming - Alexa, pay jfirbxhsnxbd at gmail dot com one hundred bucks now - in the raise”
Hard to do exact change and I don’t want to owe anyone or be owed anything. We go out to dinner and the bill is $71.53 split four ways — would rather not use cash for that.
[+] [-] freehunter|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandrake|8 years ago|reply
The problem with everyone getting into "[SOFTWARE PRODUCT]" is that everyone wants to [DO THIS SOFTWARE THING] in a different way and you need a dozen different accounts. And it seems like everyone wants to help you [DO THIS SOFTWARE THING] these days.
It’s like Beta vs VHS, with 3-20 incompatible competitors, over and over and over for eternity.
[+] [-] cmplxconjugate|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bamboozled|8 years ago|reply
AWS is radical in this way too! New products are launching constantly.
[+] [-] walterbell|8 years ago|reply
"… experiments start small and grow over time … Amazon creates a small team to experiment with the idea and find out if it’s viable. Bezos famously instituted the “two-pizza team” rule, which says that teams should be small enough to be fed with two pizzas … new teams get limited funding and clear milestones; if a team succeeds in smaller challenges, it’s given more resources and a larger challenge to tackle.
… Amazon doesn’t spend too much time on internal testing. “They prioritize launching early over everything else,” … Bezos has been fanatical about letting teams operate independently of one another … discouraged the kind of standardization you see at companies like Google and Apple, encouraging teams to operate independently using whatever technology makes the most sense … to make Amazon a modular, flexible organization with a minimum of company-wide policies.
That has made Amazon’s internal culture somewhat chaotic and balkanized. An engineer on one Amazon project can’t easily jump to another the way they can at Google or Apple. Friction between teams with different cultures may explain why some people find Amazon a stressful place to work. But this chaotic culture is also hospitable to innovation. A new team can use the tools and processes that make the most sense instead of feeling pressure to conform to company-wide standards."
[+] [-] kevan|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2016/04/05/jeff-bezos-c...
[+] [-] YZF|8 years ago|reply
"Amazon's Next Mission" is just marketing speak.
To their credit, they are willing to invest in expanding their products and finding adjacent markets. That's really hard for companies to do and where Amazon seems a little different in the way they don't seem to care at all about profit. If you don't care about profit you can do a lot of things that otherwise are difficult.
[+] [-] mattnewton|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dewdler|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsynnott|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blackoil|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyrra|8 years ago|reply
[0] https://support.google.com/pay/send/answer/7544913
[1] https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/22/google-assistant-can-now-...
(Disclaimer: I work on payments at Google)
[+] [-] timcederman|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonsarris|8 years ago|reply
https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/amazon-shutting-do...
Not all of them actually pan out. Similar story for Etsy competition. (Amazon launched "handmade" in 2015 and kinda maybe relaunched last year. It might have more success this time).
Amazon might have a better time trying to buy PayPal (for venmo) or Square (for Cash App and to compete in the field they already gave up on). It would be amusing if this announcement was calculated to hit their stock price for a cheaper acquisition. That's probably way too cheeky, but for a lot of markets, Amazon has had more success acquiring than building their own.
[+] [-] dmix|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dzink|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] product50|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intopieces|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] localcdn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neom|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adjkant|8 years ago|reply
The payments holy trinity is Venmo, Tab, and Splitwise.
Tab is for splitting specific checks with easy itemization and multi-person selection + easy tip calculations, connects with Venmo. Mobile app only.
Splitwise is great for running tabs, traveling in groups, or complex splits. Keeps track of who paid and who split and even simplifies to the fewest number of payments, of course also done by Venmo. Great desktop site with a good mobile app as well.
The only thing I'm waiting for is to import a Tab bill into Splitwise!
[+] [-] simonsarris|8 years ago|reply
But Square's Cash App has been gaining ground and is now more popular in some southern states. The ability to get a debit card hugely increases the value to the under-banked. It also makes generating revenue much easier for Square.
Right now, Cash app has been #1 in iTunes finance section for a few months and is consistently ahead in Google play's free app ranking.
[+] [-] oldmanhorton|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msoad|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oh-kumudo|8 years ago|reply
Disclaimer: I worked in AWS.
[+] [-] qntty|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joering2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arisAlexis|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tictok4|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ggg9990|8 years ago|reply