In 2005 you had, perhaps, three news sites you followed, and it was manageable to visit them all. But as self publishing exploded, those sites suddenly expanded to include friends' livejournals and blogs, funny tumblrs, and more. There was RSS, but that was for nerds and all this content just wasn't manageable anymore. Enter twitter. Staying atop media was now as easy as a "follow". In addition, you could use your own friends as a filter. It changed news discovery forever and tailored content to each user. How does this apply to ecommerce? Much like self publishing, the explosion of easy ecommerce software, from shopify to etsy, has given us far more options than are manageable. Now, we are waiting for the solution - the equivalent to Twitter - that will let us search across all these stores, discover new ones and leverage our friends. This session explores the emerging solutions, what this means to retailers, and how they can end up a Buzzfeed and not a New York Times.
Text of Why Ecommerce Must Learn From The Media Revolution
In 2005 you had, maybe, three sites you followed... When you
wanted to read them, you just went to the home page. It was
manageable.
But then the desktop publishing revolution hit
Suddenly mom had a Blogspot, your friend had a Tumblr, and your
sister had a Livejournal. Going to all those homepages wasnt so
manageable anymore.
If you were a nerd, you had RSS But to most people, words like
XML didnt mean much.
Then one day in 2006, Twitter came along
Following all your favorite sites became as easy as hitting a
follow button More than that, you could follow your friends and
lter news through them.
We went to news home pages less and we relied on our customized
feed more And there were winners and losers in this new model
Ecommerce companies be warned.... The same thing is about to
happen to you.
In 2010 you had, maybe, three sites you shopped... When you
were going to buy something, you just went to the home page. It was
manageable.
But then the ecommerce software revolution hit
Suddenly mom had an Etsy, your friend had a Shopify, and you
found cool stuff on Storenvy Going to all those homepages wasnt so
manageable anymore.
But what happens next is still up in the air ?
What are the new channels shoppers will use to nd the products
they are looking for when there are too many home pages?
