Updates

  1. Person pages list letters, writing, profiles and links as sortable tables with filters, and show each person's companies as links; Fund letters show each letter's description in its own column.
  2. Experts show a checked job title and a short description of each person; 30 more people have photographs.
  3. Every company, fund, university and publication the experts work for has a page listing the people there.
  4. Fund letters show each letter's thesis and filter by it; 225 person pages list the essays, columns and newsletter issues the person wrote.
  5. Person pages list every essay and newsletter issue a person wrote, and their own books as a table in List view.
  6. Recommends shows the five largest kinds of book and the rest under More; browse pictures load sooner.
  7. Podcasts and talks link the original episode, filter by Audio and video or Press, and list each publisher once.
  8. Pages are wider, Recommends has List and Grid, and a filter clicked again turns off.
  9. Book cards sit in a ruled grid with Open Library and Goodreads links and each book's one-line note.
  10. Funds is now Investors; each investor's styles are buttons that filter the table.
  11. Podcasts and talks on a person's page filter by year and publisher and show as a list or a grid of pictures.
  12. Quotes show only people's own words: 472 summaries written by list sites are gone.
  13. Country pages open from Browse again, and every link on the shelf lands on a page.
  14. Subject and person pages show their sections as tabs, and each book appears once on a person's page.
  15. Book cards show the quote, who said it and the source; grids show five cards to a row.
  16. On a phone, a menu holds the sections, search, Updates, Feedback and dark mode.
  17. Feedback takes a screenshot of the page with no browser prompt, opens a screenshot full size when you click it, and clears itself once sent.
  18. Book cards are centred, search names the topic each book sits in, and any text cut short shows whole on hover.
  19. Search groups its results by kind: people, companies, geographies, subjects, topics, books, funds, fund letters and papers.
  20. The Books table lists who recommended each book by name, and the browser tab names the section you are in.
  21. Feedback can take a screenshot of the page, or one you paste or choose, and opens in the corner beside Updates.
  22. Each rail button reopens its section where you left it, and Browse, Table and People show on every book and subject page.
  23. Filters grey out choices that hold nothing instead of hiding them, and Books › People filters by authors or recommenders.
  24. Feedback takes a subject line and up to three screenshots.
  25. Biographies are grouped by the person they are about: 41 new pages, from Abraham Lincoln to Lee Kuan Yew.
  26. Sport splits into 23 sports, and Religion into one topic per faith.
  27. Book lists show as cards: the cover, one recommendation quote and every recommender by name.
  28. Seventeen subjects that had two or three pages under different names now have one page each.
  29. Every page lists its Experts as authors and recommenders, with a link to them on the Experts tab.
  30. Economics, Financial history, Financial panics and Accounting are subjects of their own, with one page per financial crisis.
  31. Book, person and subject pages open inside the app, so the tabs stay in view.
  32. 996 more book covers, and photographs or logos for 227 more people and companies.
  33. Books › Browse shows every subject as cards, and the rail holds Fund letters, Papers, Experts, Books and Funds.
  34. Every topic over 150 books splits into narrower topics, each with a page of its own.

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Aggregators and demand capture

Business models

Owning the demand side and commoditising supply. The defining work is Ben Thompson's Stratechery essays on aggregation theory, which have never been collected into a book; these are the closest book-length treatments.

Books 7Experts 3Recommenders 16

Start here

  1. The Everything StoreBrad Stone, 2013
  2. The Master SwitchTim Wu, 2010
  3. The Content TrapBharat Anand, 2016
The Master SwitchThe Master Switch
T1 The Master Switch
Tim Wu · 2010
Open LibraryGoodreads

Every US information industry moved from an open era to control by one firm.

Recommended by: Patrick Collison, Andrew Chen

The Everything StoreThe Everything Store
T1 The Everything Store
Brad Stone · 2013
Open LibraryGoodreads

Amazon's first two decades, from an online bookshop to selling nearly everything.

Recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson, Mohnish Pabrai and 7 others

The Long TailThe Long Tail
T2 The Long Tail
Chris Anderson · 2006
Open LibraryGoodreads

Without shelf limits, sales of many niche products add up to rival the hits.

Recommended by: Jim Collins, Ev Williams, Jack Ma and 1 other

The Curse of the MogulThe Curse of the Mogul
T2 The Curse of the Mogul
Jonathan A. Knee, Bruce C. Greenwald, Ava Seave · 2009
Open LibraryGoodreads

Why most media companies destroy shareholder value: few have barriers to entry.

Recommended by: Keith Rabois

Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma BuiltAlibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built
T2 Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built
Duncan Clark · 2016
Open LibraryGoodreads

Alibaba from Jack Ma's Hangzhou apartment to its 2014 New York listing.

Recommended by: Patrick Collison

The Content TrapThe Content Trap
T2 The Content Trap
Bharat Anand · 2016
Open LibraryGoodreads

Media firms fail by fixating on content when value lies in the connections around it.

Unlocking the Customer Value ChainUnlocking the Customer Value Chain
T2 Unlocking the Customer Value Chain
Thales S. Teixeira, Greg Piechota · 2019
Open LibraryGoodreads

Disruptors win by breaking one link in the customer's chain of activities.

More business models

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