Hi folks! I’m here with another idea. Let’s make an amazon alternative. I know! I know! That was asked for a couple times already but lets discuss some details.
Amazon is basically glorified dropshipping by now. What if we just made federated (not sure if over activitypub would work) ads and sales, powered by fediseer (the “trust” network of the fediverse).
Example 1: So you buy at toms groceries, you trust them. they have experience with tina’s hardware store and they trust them. so you can buy both toms and tinas wares on both sites.
Example 2: So for example, I run a small business that sells computers. You run a small business that sells mice and keyboards. I have worked with you before so I mark you as trusted in my local website, which federates with yours, showing your products in my shop. If a customer buys my computer and buys your keyboard on top, my site sends you a buy order with customer address and payment. I get a small fee for my electricity of say 1%.
Can someone try and poke holes in this idea? It feels like this could work!
Have a nice weekend.
Thats entirely possible. Thanks for pointing it out.
But the rest about amazon is (interesting?) noise in my opinion. The thing keeping people locked in amazon is amazon, nothing else. Sellers need to sell there to survive and customers cant find alternatives, especially not for a competitive price.
I don’t see how you think its noise. Many items from amazon come from an amazone warehouse and delivered by amazon. they don’t exclusively do it this way but this is how they have the same day and few day shipping. I remember when amazon went from mostly being a book site to selling everything and people were gaga about 2 day shipping and when same day shipping came to some metros it was talked about a lot. I think the main thing is the other guy mentioned logistics and aws but forgot to mention the warehouse and shipping part of the logistics.
Your point - in general - is valid but what does it have to do with the idea of federated dropshipping?
nothing outside of what the other person said. it would be more akin to federated ebay rather than federated amazon and still will lack some of ebays benefits. Don’t get me wrong I think its a good idea viewed in that way. I mean better than craigslist which is not even federated.
All these services are centralized. Thats the entire point. I’m trying to figure out how to do this in a social, open and transparent way. Maybe check out techno feudalism to see why i think the needs to happen pretty soon.
Amazon is a service provider. Sellers sell there because Amazon provides product advertising (every product page is essentially an ad), order processing, payment processing, warehousing, order fulfillment (via the warehouse staff), shipping, dispute resolution, return processing (which is its own logistics nightmare), and even resale of returned/refurbished products in some cases, and all of it is coordinated through their data systems.
It is extremely convenient to sell a product on Amazon because they handle all of the customer-facing parts of selling, all you have to do is describe what you’re selling, and arrange for Amazon to get the product somehow. It’s the convenience that keeps sellers on their platform. It’s the convenience that makes it worth the cost of doing business with Amazon.
Now yes, each individual service could be replaced, but splitting them out is going to cause coordination problems. It’s going to slow down the order fulfillment, and it’s basically shunting the operation cost (both time and money) back onto the seller. That’s going to mean fewer sellers interested in using the alternative, because now they have to do for themselves what they could simply pay Amazon a percentage of their sale price to do. And because this alternative is slower and can’t provide the same kind of return guarantees that Amazon can, fewer customers are going to want to use it.
So yes, you’re right, but I don’t think you’re giving enough weight to what Amazon is as an organization. Amazon is a lot more than just the retail website. Having all of those services under one roof makes the operating costs lower, which is a big part of why the prices are so competitive. If the seller has to take on those costs then they have to raise the price of their products.
I believe its valid to point these things out from a technical standpoint. What is the point you’re trying to make though?
This premise is not correct. As I’ve described, Amazon’s business is providing services to other businesses, many services, which make their platform attractive for sellers due to ease-of-use. Therefore…
This objective is not really possible. An alternative that does not provide all of those services is not actually an alternative.
Thanks for clarifying. As stated, I disagree on this premise. We were talking about amazon.com. more specific the platform that shows you items you can buy from a variety of sellers which you dont have to vet yourself, with no ui change, with unufied payment, unified purchase, unified shipment overview. The other services i’m fine to discuss at some point but thats not the idea here.
There is no real point. You did not seem to get what the other person said and so I added it to make it a bit more clear on why its not an amazon replacement because amazon does so much more. Its just sorta how conversations involving a few people work. Im not just talking about the last thing you said but about the whole read down the line.
Got it. Thanks for chiming in. I never meant to clone the company. I’m talking about amazon.com maybe I didnt make that clear enough, sorry.
im sorry so you did not meant to clone amazon.com in a federated way but your talking about amazon.com? im a bit confused myself at this point.
Amazon.com is a marketplace, separate from aws and all their other endeavors. It is not important for this idea that they have a billion different things working.
I mean sure but again that is akin to ebay. ebay is amazone without the warehouses, shipping, and logistics intelligence and organization. so anyone that wants to avoid amazon could use ebay right now but they don’t because they want the benefits of the fast shipping and returns and such. again I think having some sort of federated marketplace would be great but it would in no way be like ordering from amazon.
You are overlooking the part where you dont haggle with the seller on amazon, you dont have to look if the item is actually used and just sold as new. You dont have to gauge if its a scam, which is hugely common on ebay. Its more like a platform for experienced buyers with concrete ideas. Not that I would not see a possible ebay alternative here as well but my main focus is on providing unified shopping in every site this platform would ne run on with a closed trust network which could then be expanded.