One of the biggest benefits of Amazon IMO is it’s homogeny. That is, It’s ability to let you buy products from dozens of different categories, among thousands of vendors, with a unified shopping experience. For any competitor to replicate this would be a monumental task and it would probably take years to see profit. I think most of us want to see decentralization of retail and increased competition and the best way might be a decentralized shopping platform.

While not something that can easily be shoehorned into the Fediverse I think it’s worth the effort to try. Sensitive info like addresses, order history, and payments would still have to be managed outside of the Fediverse, but I think it is feasible to have a federated platform that makes it easier to connect consumers with retailers.

  • miak
    link
    11 day ago

    I like this. I imagine a federated store front instance that a store could run. It would need to be highly customizable as far as how it looks, but have standardized tags for data (like Brand, Price, Discount, etc) so that information could be organized consistently. Then you have apps/websites you use to aggregate the federated store fronts into a digital mall. You have one shopping cart provided by the aggregator app/site, and the aggregator app/site could store your shipping/billing info to automatically feed to each store front you select items from when you go to check out.