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.
I think there’s some misunderstanding here. Amazon is a massive logistics system. The retail storefront is a tiny part of what Amazon is today.
AWS exists because Amazon needed to solve an internal data handling problem in order to solve their logistics problems so that they could scale up. After building that system, they started selling it as a product to other businesses. The point being, Amazon’s real success is based on providing business-to-business services. The retail website is the tiny public-facing bit, but it depends on the rest of the organization structure in order to operate properly.
What you’re proposing is more like an eBay alternative, where the system is basically just the storefront, and the sellers listing products are responsible for their own logistics. eBay still provides dispute resolution for buyers though, and that’s hard to achieve without some centralized control.
There’s also the legal problems. At some point someone will use such a system as a silk road - probably sooner rather than later. Whoever is administrating and hosting it will be liable for criminal activity in the countries where the crime occurs. It will not end well.
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.
deleted by creator
Your point - in general - is valid but what does it have to do with the idea of federated dropshipping?
deleted by creator
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?
deleted by creator
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.
deleted by creator
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.
deleted by creator
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.