Joining a Zoom (or other video) meeting is as frictionless as opening up the calendar invite and clicking the link. No need to login or do much else, except maybe fiddle with the audio for a bit. "Can you hear me now?" The benefits to this are obvious. But if you're Zoom (or another video conferencing company) there could be a slight problem: I don't really care where that link is taking me, as long as it's taking me to the meeting I was supposed to join 4 minutes ago. In other words, there aren't really any network effects. The service doesn't get any better for me as more people use it, because anybody can join the link that I send them. Benedict Evans recently made this argument, here, and he goes on to posit that video calls, like voice calls, are destined to become a commodity. All that will matter is how you package them up. Makes sense.

There's an argument out that there this pandemic isn't necessarily going to precipitate new changes, it's simply going to accelerate changes that were already underway. Benedict Evans begins to illustrate this point in a recent blog post called, COVID and cascading collapses.

In it, he starts by looking at US print advertising revenue. In the first decade or so of the consumer internet, newspapers and magazines actually managed to hold their own. It's not until after 2008 that they really start to fall off and lose significant market share to internet advertising (most of which belongs to Google and Facebook).

Intuitively this makes sense. During a crisis, budgets invariably get cut. And then when the market comes back, as it always does, you have people actually thinking about where those dollars should be spent: "Hey, maybe we should put some more money toward that Facebook thing." It's a reset moment.

The other interesting thing about the decline of print advertising is that if look at a longer time horizon -- say 85 years, as Benedict did -- you can see that its share has been declining for a very long time thanks to television. Of course, now television is changing. US consumers are "cord-cutting" faster than they're moving to buy things online.

Cascading collapses, as he calls it.

Wired recently published a long read called, "I stumbled across a huge Airbnb scam that’s taking over London." Apparently the people who do these sorts of things on the platform (things that are both illegal and questionable) call it "systemizing." This is the process of trying to create scale. Secure lots of units. Create a bunch of fake/duplicate accounts. And try and maximize revenue.

This obviously runs counter to Airbnb's mission of "authentic places", "community", and "local hosts." But as Benedict Evans points out in his latest newsletter, "where there is money and people, there will be scams." And Airbnb is obviously doing everything it can to quash this kind of activity, especially as it prepares for a possible IPO this year. The company has a policy of zero tolerance.

Fraud and government regulation are likely to be the two biggest kinks to work out as the company gets ready for public consumption. I am sure an equilibrium will be found; it's just going to take some time and a few lawyers. It goes to show you just how challenging startups can be when you combine digital (tech) and physical (real estate).