Tag: eCommerce

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eBay and Facebook told to tackle trade in fake reviews

Facebook and eBay have been warned by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to do more to tackle the sale of fake reviews on their platforms.

Fake reviews are illegal under UK consumer protection law.

The CMA said today it has found “trouble evidence” of a “thriving marketplace for fake and misleading online reviews”. Though it also writes that it does not believe the platforms themselves are intentionally allowing such content to appear on their sites.

The regulator says it crawled content on eBay and Facebook between November 2018 and June 2019 — finding more than 100 eBay listings offering fake reviews for sale during that time.

Over the same period it also identified 26 Facebook groups where people offered to write fake reviews or where businesses recruited people to write fake and misleading reviews on popular shopping and review sites.

The CMA cites estimates that more than three-quarters of UK Internet users consider online reviews before making a purchase decision — with “billions” of pounds’ worth of people’s spending being influenced by such content. So the incentives driving a market to trade reviews for money is clear.

Commenting in a statement, the CMA’s CEO, Andrea Coscelli, said: “We want Facebook and eBay to conduct an urgent review of their sites to prevent fake and misleading online reviews from being bought and sold.”

“Lots of us rely on reviews when shopping online to decide what to buy. It is important that people are able to trust that reviews are genuine, rather than something someone has been paid to write,” he added. “Fake reviews mean that people might make the wrong choice and end up with a product or service that’s not right for them. They’re also unfair to businesses who do the right thing.”

The regulator says that after it wrote to eBay and Facebook to inform them of its findings they have both “indicated that they will cooperate”.

Facebook also told the CMA that “most” of the 26 groups it identified have now been removed.

The regulator says expects the sites to put measures in place to ensure all the identified content is removed — and stop it from reappearing.

At the time of writing a search of ebay.co.uk for “reviews” returned sellers offering 5 star media reviews, 5 star Google reviews and 5 star Trustpilot reviews as the top three results — one of which was also a sponsored post:

Additional eBay listings included one offering “1/2/3/4/5 Star Freeindex Customer Service Review for business”, priced at £10 and sold by a UK based seller who has been an eBay member since Feb 2011; one 5 star review “on Google” which the seller touts with the line “Boost your business and get new Customers” — at a cost of £2.69; one “100% positive FAST” review for £1; and five 5 Star Reviews on Google priced at £15 — offered by a seller apparently based in Portugal who has been an eBay member since March 2014.

A search of UK Facebook groups returned multiple examples of closed groups where sellers appear to be soliciting reviews, either in exchange for goods and/or payment…

 

Reached for a response to the CMA’s call for measures to be put in place tgo tackle the illegal trade of fake reviews, Facebook sent us the following statement — attributed to a spokesperson:

Fraudulent activity is not allowed on Facebook, including the trading of fake reviews. We have removed 24 of the 26 groups and pages that the CMA reported to us yesterday and had already removed a number of them prior to the CMA flagging them to us. We know there is more to do which is why we’ve tripled the size of our safety and security team to 30,000 and continue to invest in technology to help proactively prevent abuse of our platform.

An eBay spokesperson also told us:

We have zero tolerance for fake or misleading reviews. We have informed the CMA that all of the sellers they identified have been suspended. The listings have been removed. Listings such as these are strictly against our policy on illegal activity and we will act where our rules are broken. We welcome the report from the CMA and will work closely with them in reviewing its findings.

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‘The Operators’: Acceleprise partner Whitney Sales and Docsend CEO Russ Heddleston on how to grow your sales strategies

Tim Hsia & Neil Devani Contributor
Tim Hsia is the CEO of Media Mobilize and a Venture Partner at Digital Garage. Neil Devani is an angel investor and venture capitalist focused on companies solving hard problems.

Welcome to this transcribed edition of The Operators. TechCrunch is beginning to publish podcasts from industry experts, with transcriptions available for Extra Crunch members so you can read the conversation wherever you are.

The Operators highlights the experts building the products and companies that drive the tech industry. Speaking from experience at companies like Google, Brex, Slack, Docsend, Facebook, Edmodo, WeWork, Mint, etc., these experts share insider tips on how to break into fields like product management and enterprise sales. They also share best practices for entrepreneurs to hire and manage experts in fields outside their own.

This week’s edition features Whitney Sales, a general partner at Acceleprise, the leading enterprise SaaS accelerator, and Russ Heddleston, founder and CEO of DocSend, a fast-rising document management and sharing product.

Whitney brings sales experience from LoopNet, Meltwater, SpringAhead/Tallie, and People Data Labs, before starting her own sales consultancy aptly named “The Sales Method.” Russ brings experience from founding and selling his first company to Facebook, before becoming the first salesperson of the second company he founded, DocSend.

Neil Devani and Tim Hsia created The Operators after seeing and hearing too many heady, philosophical podcasts about the future of the world and the tech industry, and not enough attention on the practical day-to-day work that makes it all happen.

Tim is a Venture Partner at Digital Garage and the CEO & Founder of Media Mobilize, a media company and ad network. Neil is an early-stage investor based in San Francisco with a focus on companies that solve serious problems, including Andela, Clearbit, Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Vicarious Surgical, and Kudi.

If you’ve ever had to convince anyone of anything, or are interested in a career in sales or starting a company where you will have to hire or manage salespeople, you can’t miss this episode.

The show:

The Operators, hosted by Neil Devani and Tim Hsia, highlights the experts building the products and companies that drive the tech industry. Speaking from experience at companies like Google, Brex, Slack, Docsend, Facebook, Edmodo, WeWork, Mint, etc., these experts share insider tips on how to break into fields like product management and enterprise sales. They also share best practices for entrepreneurs to hire and manage experts in fields outside their own.

In this episode:

In Episode 1, we’re talking about sales. Neil interviews Whitney Sales, an investor with Acceleprise, the leading enterprise SaaS accelerator, and Russ Heddleston, founder and CEO of Docsend.

Neil Devani: Hi and welcome to the first episode of The Operators when we talk to the people building the companies of today and tomorrow. We publish every other Monday and you can find us online at operators.co.

Today’s episode is sponsored by Four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic’s Lion’s Mane Mushroom Coffee has all of coffee’s focusing bark with none of the jittery bite. Lion’s Mane provides productivity, focus, and creativity all while being a healthy alternative to that daily cup of coffee. Go to www.foursigmatic.com/operators-special to try out Four Sigmatic.

I’m your host Neil Devani, and we’re coming to you today from Digital Garage here in sunny San Francisco. Joining me is Russ Heddleston, founder and CEO of DocSend, a popular product for managing and sharing sensitive documents.

Also joining us is Whitney Sales, partner at Acceleprise, the premier SaaS accelerator. Whitney has 10 years of startup sales experience and is the founder of the sales method, a consultancy that helps startups with go-to-market and sales. Whitney and Russ, thank you for joining us. It’s a pleasure to have you. If we could start if just give us a little bit of your background that would be great.

Russ Heddleston: I’ll start. I’m Russ Heddleston, as you said, co-founder and CEO of DocSend. My background is not in sales it’s in software engineering. I was at Stanford for my Bachelor’s and Masters in computer science. And then I worked at a bunch of different tech companies over the years as an intern at Microsoft, as a PM intern, I was the first engineering intern at Trulia, I ran the engineering team in a company called Greystripe for a few years, an early intern at Dropbox. 

And then DocSend is actually my second company. I started the first one in 2010 while I was in business school at Harvard, and then ended up being acquired by Facebook. And I started DocSend about six years ago here in San Francisco.

Whitney Sales: Hi, my name is Whitney Sales. I’m a GP, general partner at Acceleprise Ventures. My background is an early stage sales. Before Acceleprise I actually started a sales consultancy called The Sales Method where I worked with founders in getting to $1M in ARR, really in the early stages of the problem solving of sales. 

Before that I worked for several startups. LoopNet in the early days, helped launch two products for them. I worked at a company called Meltwater before they were acquired. 

And I worked for a company called SpringAhead. They are now Tallie, they were also acquired. Ran sales for a company called People Data Labs. And then I just spun out on my own and started the Sales Method which ended up bringing me to Acceleprise. 

Devani: Awesome, really great story. Just to start, I would love to hear from both of you a little bit about your organizations and how you think about sales. And maybe you can give us a little bit of the definitions around different roles that you see in a sales organization, whether it’s your company or other companies you’re investing in or have worked with in the past. 

Sales: There’s a lot of different roles in sales. It really depends on the type of organization you’re running, candidly. But traditionally there’s an SDR, sales development rep. I usually recommend that being the first hire in a sales team for a founder, so they can scale up their own time.

Then there’s an account executive within an organization that’s typically doing a direct sale. There may be senior account executives or junior account executives, like a mid-market enterprise executive depending on the type of sales cycle they’re running.

Sales engineers, if you’re dealing with a complex dev tool, traditionally, or a more heavy enterprise implementation tool. 

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Verified Expert Brand Designer: Stitzlein Studio

After spending years working for in-house design teams and well-known brand agencies such as Nike, Google, and Pentagram, Joe and Leslie Stitzlein, who are also husband and wife, decided to launch their own branding studio. You’ve seen their work in many places; from launching the identities for Netflix, Mac OS X, Nike Flyknit, dwell and Lilly.

Stitzlein Studio has ushered in a new chapter for the couple who now works with a global network of independent designers, illustrators, and developers to help companies develop or expand their brands. It doesn’t matter whether it’s designing an identity or launching a new product, the founders of Stitzlein Studio are eager to share their vast experiences and take on a new challenge.

Advice for startup founders

“Be yourself, and be courageous. That is not easy, especially when you have investors to satisfy and payroll to make [we’re business owners too at the end of the day and totally get it]. We’ve seen founders try to mimic successful brands rather than spending time and energy on what makes them unique. Instead of trying to look like Google, figure out what you are and amplify the shit out of that. It’s surprising how many companies underestimate themselves when what they do is amazing. Our job is to find what makes them distinctive and pour gas on it.”

Stitzlein Studio’s branding philosophy

“Each brand has its own DNA, just as each person is unique. A company’s DNA comes to life both on a surface level by how they look, but also how the brand interacts with people in the world.”

 

Below, you’ll find the rest of the founder reviews, the full interview, and more details like pricing and fee structures. This profile is part of our ongoing series covering startup brand designers and agencies with whom founders love to work, based on this survey and our own research. The survey is open indefinitely, so please fill it out if you haven’t already.

Interview with Stitzlein Studio Creative Directors Joe and Leslie Stitzlein

Yvonne Leow: Can you tell me a little bit about your background and why did the two of you decide to create a studio together?

Joe Stitzlein: Leslie and I had been working at a lot of different places before this. I had been in-house at Nike for seven years and spent three years at Google. There’s not a lot of opportunities to take risks in life, and we thought why not pivot from climbing the in-house ladder and share everything we’ve learned about branding with smaller startups as well as larger companies.

One aspect of our work that we really enjoy is taking a wonderful technical innovation and translating it into communications that are beautiful, helpful and inspiring. This is true for everything from a new running shoe to a new cryptocurrency; we love boiling complicated innovations down into a striking image or experience.

We wanted to take some of those lessons from the Nikes of the world, and the nonprofits and interactive clients Leslie had, and bring those to smaller scale clients. It was a fun opportunity.

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Whitebox raises $5M for its e-commerce logistics platform

Whitebox, a startup that CEO Marcus Startzel said is working to “power the direct-to-consumer economy,” has raised $5 million in Series A funding.

The company works with both startups and more established brands, giving them the tools they need to run direct-to-consumer e-commerce businesses. Customers include McCormick, Starbucks, KitchenAid, Bare Bones and Super Coffee-maker Kitu.

As Startzel put it, “All our clients need to do is send us their product, and then we take care of everything.” That includes listing the products on different online marketplaces, promoting those listings with ads and actually sending the products to customers once they’ve been purchased.

According to Startzel, while there are other companies building tools around Amazon listings and ads, and still others focused on logistics, Whitebox is unique because “we’re selling stuff and we’re moving stuff.” He argued the company can tap into sales opportunities that its competitors can’t, thanks to a “technology platform that connects to both sides” and allows Whitebox to find the best way to sell a brand’s products, for example in multi-packs and variety packs.

Adtech veteran Marcus Startzel becomes CEO at Whitebox

Asked whether this approach — in which Whitebox handles physical fulfillment from its own warehouse space — means that the company will need a lot more funding to grow, Startzel first praised his “world-class warehouse team,” then said, “I’m not actually buying warehouses. I’m leasing space, but within weeks of us setting up operations in a warehouse, it’s profitable. It’s not a drag on our business, it’s a huge accelerant to our business.”

Startzel previously worked as a digital ad executive before joining Whitebox earlier this year. Since then, the company has grown to 42 full-time employees (from less than 30) and opened a second fulfillment center.

The new funding was by TDF Ventures, with participation from Merkle CEO David Williams, Millennial Media co-founder Chris Brandenburg and others.

“Our investment signifies our confidence in the team, growth to date, the company and its market potential,” said TDF Ventures Managing Director James Pastoriza in a statement. “By Q1 of 2019, more brick-and-mortar store closings have been announced in the U.S. than in all of 2018, which clearly demonstrates the opportunity in the fast-growing eCommerce market.”

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Verified Expert Growth Marketing Agency: NoGood

NoGood CEO Mostafa Elbermawy describes how they evaluate a client’s growth challenges by quoting Zen teacher Hunryu Suzuki: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are only a few.” Rather than deferring to in-house playbooks, NoGood adopts an open mind combined with a methodical, data-driven approach to find untapped growth opportunities for its clients. Learn more about how NoGood came to be and why they’re willing to say no to potential clients.

On NoGood’s approach to growth:

“Our work is methodical. It’s intentional. We have to talk about it. We are very transparent about what we do and it’s completely process oriented. Hacking is a misnomer. Growth is not about clever shortcuts. It has to be sustainable and repeatable, and if it’s not, we won’t do it.”

On NoGood’s proudest accomplishment:

“They helped us launch our business. They are our CMO and our CTO. Would recommend to anyone.” Erica Tsypin, Washington D.C., Co-Founder & COO, Steer

“Our success in jumpstarting Steer’s business is one of our proudest accomplishments this year. Steer is an electric car subscription startup that asked us to increase their activations. Basically, our job was to generate new active members, which not only meant encouraging more users to download the app, upload a license, and get approved, but it also meant delivering a car to a member’s door, having them drive that car and leaving a review. We were able to demonstrate signup traction for Steer and help them launch in under three months.”

 

Below, you’ll find the rest of the founder reviews, the full interview, and more details like pricing and fee structures. This profile is part of our ongoing series covering startup growth marketing agencies with whom founders love to work, based on this survey and our own research. The survey is open indefinitely, so please fill it out if you haven’t already.

Interview with NoGood CEO and Growth Lead Mostafa Elbermawy

Yvonne Leow: To kick things off, how did you get into growth?

Mostafa Elbermawy: Well, I went to school for archaeology, but hieroglyphics weren’t paying the bills, so I taught myself how to code and started a web design studio after college. I started building websites for clients, and they started asking me how to drive more users to their sites to help grow their business.

I started tinkering with growth out of curiosity, and eventually joined the digital experience team at American Express. That job helped me gain some marketing and growth experience, and I ended up falling in love with that part of the job.

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Amazon expands air cargo fleet with 15 more planes, will have 70 planes by 2021

Following news from earlier this month that FedEx was dumping Amazon from its air cargo service, Amazon this morning announced the expansion of its own air delivery network, Amazon Air. The retailer says it’s leasing an additional fifteen Boeing 737-800 cargo aircraft from partner GE Capital Aviation Services (GECAS). These will join the five Boeing 737-800’s already leased from GECAS, announced earlier this year. The aircraft will fly out of over 20 U.S. air gateways in the Amazon Air network.

In addition, Amazon says it will open more air facilities in 2019, including at Fort Worth Alliance Airport, Wilmington Air Park, and Chicago Rockford International Airport. Meanwhile, the main Air Hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport will open in 2021.

“We’re delighted to support Amazon Air’s dedicated air network,” said Richard Greener, GECAS Cargo’s Senior Vice President, in a statement. “The capability of the 737-800 freighter will further Amazon’s ability to provide reliable and regional delivery to its customers for years to come.”

The Amazon Air network, then called Prime Air, was first launched in 2016, with the goal of speeding up Amazon’s e-commerce deliveries, particularly for its Prime members. But over the years, the competition with partners-slash-rivals like FedEx have heated up — and not only on air cargo, but also in newer areas like ground delivery robots and drones.

At the end of last year, Amazon announced more aircraft additions for Amazon Air, bumping the network from 40 planes to 50. Today, it says it’s on track to reach 70 planes by 2021, thanks to this new expansion.

The company also claims to have created thousands of U.S. jobs thanks to Amazon’s investment of millions into its air network.

“These new aircraft create additional capacity for Amazon Air, building on the investment in our Prime Free One-Day program,” said Dave Clark, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations at Amazon, in an announcement. “By 2021, Amazon Air will have a portfolio of 70 aircraft flying in our dedicated air network.”

These investments around delivery logistics come at a time when Amazon says it’s trying to speed up Prime from two days to just one. The news prompted Walmart to announce its a next-day shipping service of its own. Target, meanwhile, recently launched an integrated same-day shipping service on its website, powered by its same-day service Shipt.

Amazon responded by noting it already has over 10 million items available for one-day shipping today — reminding rivals that it’s still leading the market on this front.

Amazon also took the time today to highlight other areas where it’s investing in supply chain initiatives, including its Delivery Service Partner program, which helps people (including Amazon employees) start their own Amazon delivery business; plus Amazon’s crowdsourced package delivery workforce Flex; and its dedicated network over 10,000 trailers to increase Amazon’s own trucking capacity.

Though not mentioned, Amazon also just rolled out a new Amazon Flex app for iOS. Launched on the App Store on June 12, the app lets individuals sign-up and be vetted to become an Amazon Flex contractor right from their iPhone.

Image credit: Prime Air branded plane, via Amazon Press Center; not representative of today’s news

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Meet Hatch Baby’s portable, WiFi-enabled sleep device Rest+

Menlo Park-based Hatch Baby has prided itself on introducing “smart” nursery devices — including Grow, a changing pad with a built-in scale and Rest, a device doubling as a sound machine and night light.

Now, the company is introducing an updated version of Rest with Rest+ as part of an effort to help further establish Hatch Baby in the family sleep space.

The Rest+ device will still have the sound machine, night light and a “time to rise” feature found in the original. But, with feedback from many customers and Amazon reviews, Hatch Baby has now included the addition of an audio monitor and a clock.

The audio monitor is essential for letting parents check in on baby while they sleep without going into the room and potentially waking the baby up.

The clock is also a fantastic addition, in my opinion, especially for those with toddlers who can read numbers. These little people are big enough to get out of their beds but not mature enough to know moms and dads need to sleep at 4 a.m. Often advice passed from parent to parent is to put a clock in the baby room and tell kids not to come out until it shows a certain number.

It also helps establish healthy sleep habits in little ones. Most toddlers (ages one to 3) need about 12 to 14 hours of sleep in a day, spread out between nighttime and naps, according to the National Sleep Foundation. However, as any parent knows, the older a baby gets, the harder it is to get them to want to go to bed.

Rest+ features include:

  • Audio monitor: Parents can now check in on their child in their room without the risk of disrupting their little one’s sleep right from their phone — no extra gadgets necessary.
  • Sound machine: Parents can choose from a range of sound options, from white noise to soft lullabies. They can simply crank up the volume remotely when the dog barks or the neighbors throw a party.
  • Night light: This feature, which stays cool to the touch, provides soft and soothing
    lighting for midnight feeding sessions or bright and reassuring light when the dark feels scary for older kids. Parents and kids can choose from a rainbow of colors to make it their own, but the optional patented toddler-lock setting makes sure that parents are the only ones in control when needed.
  • Time-to-Rise: Green means go! This feature enables parents to teach toddlers and
    preschoolers to stay in bed until it’s time to rise once the light changes color (and enjoy those extra minutes of sleep).
  • Clock: Rest+ features an easy-to-read clock so that parents can stay on track with their busy schedules and can help teach children to read numbers.

Any one of these features could cost parents a good amount of dough when purchased separately. A Phillips Avent audio monitor runs just under $100 on Amazon, for example. However, Rest+ is just $80 (slightly more than the original $60 price tag for the Rest device), for all five features.

Something else that may make the Rest+ attractive to parents — it is WiFi-enabled and portable so you can take it with you when you travel.

Whipping a sound machine, nightlight, audio monitor and clock all into one portable, WiFi-enabled device can also save precious space in the nursery and makes this a must-have item for many parents hoping for just a little bit more sleep.

Hatch Baby co-founder Ann Crady Weiss tells TechCrunch the Rest+ will only be available on the Hatch Baby site and is part of a plan to launch a full line of products aimed at getting parents — and their children — more precious sleep. Though she wouldn’t say what the company was working on next, she did mention we’d hear something about it in the coming months. So stay tuned!

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Shyp is preparing for a comeback under new management

Fifteen months after shutting down, Shyp is getting ready to launch again. The startup tweeted today that “We are back! We’re hard at work to rebuild an unparalleled shipping experience. Before we begin operations again, we’d love to hear your feedback in this quick survey. We look forward to working with you and can’t wait to change the future of shipping!”

Most of the survey questions focus on online shopping returns, asking how easy or difficult it was to package the product for return, print the prepaid label, purchase postage or ship the product. The last question offers a hint about what direction the rebooted Shyp might take, asking “When returning a product, how likely would you be to use a service that picked up and shipped the product instead of having to ship it yourself?”

Shyp’s website doesn’t say when it will be back or what services it will offer, but it does mention that Shyp restarted in January 2019 under new management and backed by angel investors “with plans to disrupt the industry with what it does best: cutting-edge technology and a superior customer experience.”

Once one of the hottest on-demand startups, Shyp shut down in March 2018 after missing targets to expand to cities outside of San Francisco. When it first launched in 2014, Shyp initially offered on-demand service for almost anything customers wanted shipped, charging $5 plus postage to pick up, package and bring the item to a shipping company. Eventually it introduced a pricing tier in 2016 as it tried to find new approaches to its business model, before closing down two years later.

If the new Shyp does focus on making online returns easier, it will be bringing back one of its most popular services. The company expanded into online returns in 2015 after noticing that many customers used the app to return products they had purchased online.

TechCrunch has emailed Shyp for more information.

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Shyp is preparing for a comeback under new management

Fifteen months after shutting down, Shyp is getting ready to launch again. The startup tweeted today that “We are back! We’re hard at work to rebuild an unparalleled shipping experience. Before we begin operations again, we’d love to hear your feedback in this quick survey. We look forward to working with you and can’t wait to change the future of shipping!”

Most of the survey questions focus on online shopping returns, asking how easy or difficult it was to package the product for return, print the prepaid label, purchase postage or ship the product. The last question offers a hint about what direction the rebooted Shyp might take, asking “When returning a product, how likely would you be to use a service that picked up and shipped the product instead of having to ship it yourself?”

Shyp’s website doesn’t say when it will be back or what services it will offer, but it does mention that Shyp restarted in January 2019 under new management and backed by angel investors “with plans to disrupt the industry with what it does best: cutting-edge technology and a superior customer experience.”

Once one of the hottest on-demand startups, Shyp shut down in March 2018 after missing targets to expand to cities outside of San Francisco. When it first launched in 2014, Shyp initially offered on-demand service for almost anything customers wanted shipped, charging $5 plus postage to pick up, package and bring the item to a shipping company. Eventually it introduced a pricing tier in 2016 as it tried to find new approaches to its business model, before closing down two years later.

If the new Shyp does focus on making online returns easier, it will be bringing back one of its most popular services. The company expanded into online returns in 2015 after noticing that many customers used the app to return products they had purchased online.

TechCrunch has emailed Shyp for more information.

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Amazon Spark, the retailer’s two-year-old Instagram competitor, has shut down

Amazon’s two-year-old Instagram competitor, Amazon Spark, is no more.

Hoping to capitalize on the social shopping trend and tap into the power of online influencers, Amazon in 2017 launched its own take on Instagram with a shoppable feed of stories and photos aimed at Prime members. The experiment known as Amazon Spark has now come to an end. However, the learnings from Spark and Amazon’s discovery tool Interesting Finds are being blended into a new social-inspired product, #FindItOnAmazon.

Amazon Spark had been a fairly bland service, if truth be told. Unlike on Instagram, where people follow their friend, interests, brands like they like, and people they find engaging or inspiring, Spark was focused on the shopping and the sale. While it tried to mock the Instagram aesthetic at times with fashion inspiration images or highly posed travel photos, it lacked Instagram’s broader appeal. Your friends weren’t there and there weren’t any Instagram Stories, for example. Everything felt too transactional.

Amazon declined to comment on the apparent shutdown of Spark, but the service is gone from the website and app.

The URL amazon.com/spark, meanwhile, redirects to the new #FoundItOnAmazon site — a site which also greatly resembles another Amazon product discovery tool, Interesting Finds.

Interesting Finds has been around since 2016, offering consumers a way to browse an almost Pinterest-like board of products across a number of categories. It features curated “shops” focused on niche themes, like a “Daily Carry” shop for toteable items, a “Mid Century” shop filled with furniture and décor, a shop for “Star Wars” fans, one for someone who loves the color pink, and so on. Interesting Finds later added a layer of personalization with the introduction of a My Mix shop filled with recommendations tailored to your interactions and likes.

The Interesting Finds site had a modern, clean look-and-feel that made it a more pleasurable way to browse Amazon’s products. Products photos appeared on white backgrounds while the clutter of a traditional product detail page was removed.

We understand from people familiar with the products that Interesting Finds is not shutting down as Spark has. But the new #FoundItOnAmazon site will take inspiration from what worked with Interesting Finds and Spark to turn it into a new shopping discovery tool.

Interesting Finds covers a wide range of categories, but #FoundItOnAmazon will focus more directly on fashion and home décor. Similar to Interesting Finds, you can heart to favorites items and revisit them later.

The #FoundItOnAmazon site is very new and isn’t currently appearing for all Amazon customers at this time. If you have it, the amazon.com/spark URL will take you there.

Though Amazon won’t talk about why its Instagram experiment is ending, it’s not too hard to make some guesses. Beyond its lack of originality and transactional nature, Instagram itself has grown into a far more formidable competitor since Spark first launched.

Last fall, Instagram fully embraced its shoppable nature with the introduction of shopping features across its app that let people more easily discover products from Instagram photos. It also added a new shopping channel and in March, Instagram launched its own in-app checkout option to turn product inspiration into actual conversions.

It was certainly a big move into Amazon territory. And while that led to headlines about Instagram as the future of shopping, it’s not going to upset Amazon’s overall dominance any time soon.

That said, Instagram’s changes may have prompted Amazon to give up trying to build its own Instagram clone, so it could instead focus on building out better and more differentiated tools for product discovery, like the new site.