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Are reviews getting their next moment?

There was a lot of talk this week about the big OpenAI/Shopify partnership on Agentic Commerce. If you missed it, well … you can read about it here, here, here and here. And here. (And a bunch of other places. It’s a big deal.)

The thing that’s gone underdiscussed (or maybe even not discussed) is the role of reviews. So, we’re going to cover that.

First off, if you just look at the experience, it’s pretty clear that content matters a lot.

Here’s a video of a fairly general search for dinnerware. Take a look at what ends up showing up in the results:

I’m not talking about the brands. I’m talking about the connection between the content (pulled from context … market trends in this case, since I was using a temporary chat) and recommendations. And, then, look at the connection between the supporting content on the recommendations (“Why you might like this” and “What people are saying”).

There’s a through line all the way from the context to the supporting content, which makes it appear that reviews are powering a good deal of what gets recommended to a person.

For a while now, reviews—which everyone agrees are important—have been a category that’s been favored for commoditization (how do we make this thing cheaper?) over innovation (how do we make this thing more valuable). I think this is likely the signal that reviews are back.

And I’m super excited for us to put our spin on it.