CanCon Podcast Ep. 64: Is Shopify targeting Square or Amazon?

It is possible that in the future, the words you are reading right now may have been typed without a conventional keyboard, with only my brainwaves doing the work. At least, that was the potential on display at Facebook’s developer conference, F8. Beyond brain-computer interfacing, other announcements included tech that will allow you to hear through your skin, 360 cameras, AR platforms and an SDK. Along with the announcements, Zuckerberg unveiled a 10-year roadmap, which has the whole CanCon team speculating if we will even recognize the Facebook of the future.

In other parts of California, Shopify was holding its own conference, Shopify Unite, during which it announced the launch of Shopify Pay and a self-designed POS chip and card reader. Shopify denies that Shopify Pay is intended to put them in competition with other ePayment services, but rather aims to make payment processes in online retail experiences simpler leading to higher conversion rates for sellers. The CanCon team agrees to disagree.

Finally, a recent analysis of LinkedIn data has shown that millennial’s are changing jobs on average every 2.5 years during their first decade out of college. Ryan Holmes of Hootsuite published an article on BetaKit bringing these issues to light, as well as how Hootsuite is trying to overcome the low retention trends of the digital generation. The CanCon team is wondering if the kids are alright.

Tune in as CanCon’s podcast crew – Erin Bury, Managing Director of 88 Creative, Patrick O’Rourke, MobileSyrup Senior Editor, Rob Kenedi, TWG Entrepreneur in Residence, and Douglas Soltys, BetaKit Editor in Chief – ponders if Facebook will someday allow us to smell the future.

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