Meta's Muse is gaining a potential toll booth on online checkout, which squeezes Booking and Airbnb. Within 48 hours Shopify, PayPal and Expedia joined Muse checkout, since each merchant has reason to join early if agents steer demand. For Booking and Airbnb, joining could mean paying fees on bookings that would have come direct anyway, about 90% of Airbnb's traffic as of Q3 2023; staying out bets booking habits won't move to Muse. No deal has disclosed economics, the number to watch. x.com 

Meta and Muse remain bullish, but Amazon cutting off Muse shows a digital knife fight is coming that many are overlooking, since no platform wants to be commoditized or layered over. Meta's heavy spending on talent and infrastructure leaves it well equipped for that fight. x.com  x.com 

Amazon should thrive as shopping agents spread, because agents seek the best product at the lowest price delivered fastest, and Amazon leads on assortment, prices and fulfillment. It blocks outside agents today, but CEO Andy Jassy has signaled integrations will come; Amazon is building its own agents first and must protect its large ad and sponsored-listing business while it works out agent monetization. Once it opens up, Amazon should over-index in agent-driven market share. x.com  x.com 

Amazon keeps hurting itself with its AI strategy by blocking AI shopping agents such as Muse to protect its high-margin sponsored-product revenue. That hands Shopify, which just partnered with Muse to enable agentic checkout with Shop Pay on all Shopify stores, an easy win. The tradeoff works for now because agentic shopping is a small share of volume, but if Amazon stays this stubborn it faces a long-run disintermediation threat as AI comes to facilitate something like 25% of online shopping. … Show more

Muse gives Meta a way to monetize its massive installed base. Meta is now ready to pursue that opportunity. x.com 

Amazon is headed for new all-time highs, through either a huge run-up into earnings or a huge gap up on them in about a month. Meta's Muse agent is the reason, as it drives heavy CPU demand. x.com 

Meta's Muse can make money on both sides of commerce at once. It can take a commission on purchases made through Muse while helping businesses create ads and spend more on Meta, feeding its core ad business. Per @StockSavvyShay, Deutsche Bank sees Muse reaching about 8% of Meta revenue by 2030, with agent commerce fees driving about 75% of its upside case, while assuming only about 0.3% of daily users ever pay and giving no credit for ad spending it generates. x.com 

Meta's Muse is likely to gain a major consumer-agent advantage from a network linking its users' agents. Meta's 3.5bn daily platform users offer unmatched distribution; 25% of 10mn Muse signups use it daily, with early retention twice Threads' initial rate. Muse is the best pure consumer agent today, and the odds of a rival surpassing it are low, though it is early and execution matters. The stock prices in little beyond Meta's core business. x.com 

Amazon still has many positives, with Prime and logistics as big moats, but AI shopping agents are a real complication. Customers used to buying on Amazon without looking around could be steered elsewhere: ChatGPT found in seconds a $38 Walmart bookshelf that 20 minutes of searching Amazon missed. That is a problem with no easy answers for a platform designed to be the only place customers look, and for ad and lead-gen businesses; Amazon has blocked agents such as ChatGPT from its listings. … Show more

Enthusiasm for Meta looks overdone now, because its Muse AI is likely to be cut off from many of its functions, as Amazon has just done, and competitors will emerge. The stock was a good buy in the $500s. x.com