Across the globe, as the novel coronavirus moves us from communal spaces into the confinement of our homes, our social experiences are forced to adapt. Beyond the social networks we already know and use, we are finding new ways to integrate social into our online lives. At Y Combinator, we are considering what this might mean for the future of e-commerce. For several years, we have had our eye on Pinduoduo as an interesting case study. But now, as China is recovering from the impact of COVID-19, Pinduoduo and their social-shopping approach is even better poised to fully capture the offline-to-online transition in commerce. The success of Pinduoduo in China suggests there is a huge opportunity for social commerce platforms to emerge in other regions.

Toutiao, one of the flagship products of Bytedance, may be the largest app you’ve never heard of–it’s like every news feed you read, YouTube, and TechMeme in one. Without any explicit user inputs, social graph, or product purchase history to rely on, Toutiao offers a personalized, high quality-content feed for each user that is powered by machine and deep learning algorithms.