The Messaging Layer
Semil Shah wrote an interesting post last night on the tiers of the “on-demand stack”. At the bottom is Labor - the TaskRabbits, the Uber drivers, the Instacarters. At the top are the Applications - the branded, closed experiences that have always been a company’s touchpoint with its customers.
Yet it seems that there might be a push to add another, thin but expansive, layer on top - a messaging layer. And while this layer may begin with on-demand services, it’s hard to imagine where it could end.
For example, if you haven’t already, check out this cool project, Magic. With Magic, instead of opening Postmates to order dinner, Drizly to get some booze, or BloomThat to get flowers, I simply type, “Order my favorite Chipotle burrito”, “I need a twelve-pack”, or “Send flowers to my girlfriend”. And then, voila, the layer connects to the relevant service and places my order.
Yet, as cool and convenient as this is, Magic may only be the beginning, and on-demand just the tip of the iceberg.
There’s a company called Operator that I believe will come out (hopefully soon) and do this properly and scalable-y. I may be completely wrong, as all I know for certain about Operator is that it’s an Expa company and I’ve been on the wait-list for a very long time. But, from what I can gather, Operator is looking to be this exact messaging layer described - sitting on top of the on-demand stack and extending to cover a lot more.
From Operator’s job listing:
“We are early builders behind everyday products like Facebook, Twitter, and Uber, and we believe Operator could become something just as big. Our product lies at the intersection of technology’s biggest trends today—messaging, mobile, and on-demand services—and we’re venture backed by top investors and entrepreneurs around the world.”
Now, if Operator is what I think it is, what are the implications and why do they think they can be as big as Facebook?
We need think past on-demand. How about ordering a book, answering a question, or finding the best place to eat? The brilliant thing about Operator is that it wouldn’t limit its actions to Amazon, Google, and Foursquare respectively.
As consumers, we usually have to choose what sites to search based on our familiarity. But with Operator, when you say “order me a copy of Zero to One” it can simply order it at the lowest price it can find - whether that comes from Amazon, Jet, or a local bookstore.
If I say, “have a car outside my apartment at 7pm tonight” and Uber is surging, Operator can just bring me a Lyft.
If I ask it a historical fact, Operator may pull from Google, but it also may pull from a new source that has more fact-checking, but less of a brand name and network effects.
Because, in Operator’s world, services are commoditized and messaging is the new mobile OS.