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There's a decent amount of innovation that can make the assistants more efficient, so you can improve profitability without driving down wages. But there's also something else:

Since a high percentage of services will likely end in a transaction, there's a huge opportunity to become the Amazon-scale retailer of services. I find I don't even google products I want to buy anymore, I just immediately search Amazon. Amazon is my retail UI. If Magic can do the same thing in this space—become the service UI—I'd imagine it won't be long before more revenue comes form partnerships than directly from consumers.

2 comments

Personally, Amazon's UI has a long way to go and doesn't look like it's going to get better anytime soon.

If you know what you're looking for, it's fine, but as soon as you try to comparison shop it falls apart fairly quickly.

I've gotten into the habit of looking for experts on other sites that do hands-on comparisons for the thing I want to buy (some recent examples: rain jackets and fitness meters). Amazon is honestly a terrible UI for this sort of thing.

I know that they're trying, but at this point they've lost my trust that what they show in search results is relevant unless I'm being extremely precise.

So, if the market shows that UI is what causes Amazon dearly, and that the market prefers a magic like messaging interface, how long will it take for Amazon to offer a magic like service at a price point that is affordable to everyone. Compare that with the time and effort required for Magic to become a retailer with Amazon's efficiency. I'll bet on the former.

> Personally, Amazon's UI has a long way to go and doesn't look like it's going to get better anytime soon.

Haven't people been dismissing them over their UI since the beginning of time? And yet it works and is successful?

The sad thing is - UIs generally don't matter if there's anything else making your product special. You can make your users as miserable as you want, and they will still use your service. Companies know it and prioritize effort accordingly.

Agreed. See Craigslist.

Craigslist's UI is great! High contrast text. All links are obvious (no iOS style "is that colored text or a button"). It loads quickly. I can find the information I need without hunting around a bunch of ads masquerading as useful content.

As an added bonus, I don't have to relearn how to use it every 6 months when the design team gets bored and decides to redo the whole thing for no good reason.

There are a few additions I'd like to see (PadMapper style apartment search being the big one), but all things considered I like Craigslist a lot more than most websites.

Compare it to Amazon where half of the items are miscategorized, sort by price doesn't actually sort by price, and sort by average customer rating is way too literal. In what world do I want to see something with a single 5 star review over the one with 191 reviews, 94% of which are 5 star, and another 4% are 4 star? But that's tucked away on page 7 of the results after all the items with nothing but a single good review. Amazon's got issues to work out.

That's exactly the reason I'd use a service like Magic. Finding stuff on Amazon takes dozens of clicks.

You can't scale a $100/hour service to the level of Amazon, there simply aren't that many people with that kind of money.

I'm pretty sure Amazon would find a way to reduce the price.

With that kind of attitude, you would obviously not be able to scale anything that would meet even the most minimal resistance.

Whats up with the negative karma here? People don't like the truth? Every day people get business off the ground in the face of serious negative criticism. People telling them they can't do something. Telling them that it isn't going to work. There is no way it would scale etc. Someone who decides that something isn't possible is just one less competitor for me!