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Comment by RaphiePS | Hacker News Reader

I think this completely misses the point. The "magic" part of Magic isn't that it's over text -- that's just an implementation detail. Rather, the value is that it navigates all these services for you. You don't have to mess with Instacart or Postmates or Doordash or any specific app. You don't have to search or filter or download or re-enter your credit card a million times. It just happens.

So, creating a single-business-specific Magic seems kinda useless.

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Well, there are two aspects to Magic... one is that it's versatile, the other is that it's low (close to zero) friction. Sonar seems to take care of the low friction part, I guess the versatility/usefulness is up to the business implementing it.

I believe a lot of the value is the simplicity of SMS. No logins, save the number in your phone and just text them like you would your friend with a request...done!

You're right though, the aggregation is definitely a big part of it.

The 'magic' of Magic isn't that unique either. It boils down to an open channel(s) to communicate with a personal assistant / concierge service. And I suspect that that calling a live person to describe the initial request seems much more expedient that bouncing texts or emails back and forth...

Many companies already offer that kind of service, e.g. https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/benefits/det...

Oddly enough, my insurance company just started offering up that type of service too....

Right. Ordering stuff over SMS isn't that great an idea. There's going to be a lot of back and forth - what size do you want, is it OK if your flight has a change of planes at DFW, do you want anchovies on the pizza? Sending an order for a bag of groceries via SMS is going to take a lot of typing.

Processing the order is currently manual. You're back in the call center era. For the back and forth, you'd probably be better off using voice. As in, the customer calls the service on the phone.

The big advantage of web ordering is that the user gets to browse the catalog and select. They can find out if it's in stock before they order. The order gets captured correctly and automatically. There's one central service for buying, and it's called Amazon.com.

For more applications, a couple back and forths is all it will take. Then, you can have your preferences saved for next time.

For me, I'd rather send a few text messages back and forth than sit synchronously on a voice call for 15 minutes.

Companies are able to handle a much larger volume of text messages than they could via voice (sync vs async).

At least for me, I send thousands of text messages per month but only do a few voice calls.

Speaking personally, half of Magic's draw is precisely because it's over text. Sure, part of the allure is that I don't have to deal with the services directly. However, for me, the other benefit is that I don't have to interact with the people behind these services directly. Maybe I'm just antisocial.

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