Can we please make a viable (federated!) amazon alternative? I have an idea!
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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 don't see why we can't just buy directly from shops. Maybe an aggregator of links for products, so there is an rss-like feed of products, prices etc?
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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.
The best idea I can come up with is a federated marketplace. Each vendor has their own instance. Buyers can browse the marketplace and have a unified checkout experience. Vendors would have unified product posts so whichever vendor has the best price or fastest shipping (user preference) would get the sale. USPS for example has shipping zones which determine the price for shipping depending on distance.
The best example I can come up with is rockauto. They are a central marketplace of different auto parts suppliers. You can find parts that are in the same location in order to combine shipping.
If you put a part in your cart it will then show parts that are in the same warehouse.
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I don't see why we can't just buy directly from shops. Maybe an aggregator of links for products, so there is an rss-like feed of products, prices etc?
like pc-partpicker
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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.
The problem they (should/did) solve was scamming, and payments. So you'd need to have some banking system with locked money, disputes etc. IMO that is the complicated part, the rest is just more or less a searchable database.
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I don't see why we can't just buy directly from shops. Maybe an aggregator of links for products, so there is an rss-like feed of products, prices etc?
I think we will see this continue, but with federated product search, soon.
Small business vendors cannot afford to continue to leave their search results to Google and Amazon to control.
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I believe its valid to point these things out from a technical standpoint. What is the point you're trying to make though?
Amazon is basically glorified dropshipping
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...
Let's make an amazon alternative.
This objective is not really possible. An alternative that does not provide all of those services is not actually an alternative.
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It's much more than that. Amazon's strength is also in its proximity warehouses and contacts with delivery companies.
Otherwise you just have a federated Ebay.
I buy stuff from Ebay and Etsy plenty often.
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Amazon is basically glorified dropshipping
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...
Let's make an amazon alternative.
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.
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The problem they (should/did) solve was scamming, and payments. So you'd need to have some banking system with locked money, disputes etc. IMO that is the complicated part, the rest is just more or less a searchable database.
Its possible that this is pretty sttaightforward. My thought on payment is stripe and paypal atm since they're already established. They also handle this.
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The best idea I can come up with is a federated marketplace. Each vendor has their own instance. Buyers can browse the marketplace and have a unified checkout experience. Vendors would have unified product posts so whichever vendor has the best price or fastest shipping (user preference) would get the sale. USPS for example has shipping zones which determine the price for shipping depending on distance.
The best example I can come up with is rockauto. They are a central marketplace of different auto parts suppliers. You can find parts that are in the same location in order to combine shipping.
If you put a part in your cart it will then show parts that are in the same warehouse.
Thats pretty straightfoward. I like it. Combined shipping can make sense. Thanks for participating.
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I don't see why we can't just buy directly from shops. Maybe an aggregator of links for products, so there is an rss-like feed of products, prices etc?
Because this does not work in reality. You have many mechanics that are hidden to the casual user but play a significant role from a vendor standpoint.
You have ui change which means you slow down the users purchase due to them finding buttons and informarion, leading to similar websites which is bad for variety and gives corporare unified marketplaces an edge
Then you have trust. Leaving a website you have learned to trust means you have to check if the next website is trustworthy which isnt feasible.
Unified order overview and checkout so you know what you bought and when its coming. Especially for a complex multi stage order.
Unified payment of course as well as claims, returns, etc.
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I think we will see this continue, but with federated product search, soon.
Small business vendors cannot afford to continue to leave their search results to Google and Amazon to control.
Thats actually a very long interesting point. Thanks for mentioning it
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Collective buying and building of such a project means that there is not universal standard or regulation and the project falls apart when there is disagreement. Given the scale this is inevitable
Look at lemmy for example: most servers play nicely but occasionally you get the server like exploding heads that cause the overwhelming majority to defederate
Amazon has 300 warehouses across the US and another 175 worldwide according to a quick web search. That’s a lot of sites that have to play nice with each other. If even one of them starts having poor practices, doing something offensive, something disruptive, etc. it may cause a lot of the others to not want to work with them. If you have one that is especially shit stirring then it may cause a huge portion of the network to cut ties.
But unlike lemmy now it’s not just some social media where you jump to a new server. Now companies have their products held hostage. Now people in that region potentially have services significantly disrupted. Now your whole system is undermined and a bezos type can swoop in to prove his is much better and more trustworthy.
A state controlling it (which would inherently happen with collective ownership if done correctly, a pseudo state would be created given the scale) would introduce regulation and enforcement to ensure consistency in operation. It is then the responsibility of the constituents to hold representatives accountable to ensure regulations and enforcement are meaningful
Thats a very good point. Thank you. I dont disagree on any of it but I think there could be alternatives to some parts.
There are physical syndicate-owned places that store collective things in them. Also, we are talking businesses here. A collective warehouse of say 100 sellers around a small city or bit town would not be easily being held hostage.
But these are details, although very interesting. Its very good long term for making such a project more resiliant and competitive.
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Condescension was not the intention at all. The fact that you mention logistics only as a foot note is what lead me to believe you really didn't understand, and it was just meant as an explanation. Amazon is just scale, in every aspect, and I don't think that can be achieved with a federated approach in the physical retail world.
As for being constructive, you can be constructive by talking someone out of an idea. I really don't believe there's any viability in the idea, no matter how much I wish there was. I personally value my time, so I assume others do as well. I consider saving someones time incredibly constructive, but that only applies if you intend to pursue the idea to actually get somewhere "real" with it, let's say reaching "profit" or improving participants existing profits.
You might enjoy spending your time figuring out solutions here, maybe you see it as an economic experiment or hobby project, so it's fun no matter the outcome. I'm that case my comment really isn't constructive in your situation, and I'm sorry.
Rest assured I didn't comment out of malice.
Thanks for explaining. I appreciate the honesty and now I see your post in a different light.
That said, I'm currently selfemployed with a small ethical it company and do open source development and project management as well as ngo work on the side.
You could argue that I'm a hopeless idealist, although I have made millions with my projects in the past (which I of course did not keep).
I'd say I have a keen sense for opportunities with a certain stubbornness to do the right thing and break down what I perceive as wrong.
If I can get 10 vendors to get off amazon and provide good service for their customers, I'm glad. Everyone on top I'm stoked.
So yes, a hobby if you will.
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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.
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The problem they (should/did) solve was scamming, and payments. So you'd need to have some banking system with locked money, disputes etc. IMO that is the complicated part, the rest is just more or less a searchable database.
That's a solved issue. Monero escrow services have been doing exactly this for the dark web for years now
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But you're saying yourself that those are "obviously bots". It's easy to ignore those. And just to be clear, I really did mean the reviews, and not the score (where the skew is less transparent).
Everyone leaving a review has to have an account somewhere in the federated network. This includes seeing up an instance just to use it for review bots, or fake votes on something. Obviously there's is defederation and other mechanisms, and I'm sure there are ways to improve the situation. But the whole base setup is just inherently much harder to get into a trustworthy position. Even the common centralized sites (not just Amazon) have trouble getting it under control when they can "see" will the related data, for finding outliers and such. I'm just saying it's an even harder proposition.
There is a simple way to solve this. Make it so only people who have purchased the product can give reviews.
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@haui_lemmy Flomarket is more like a separate shops, you need a protocol, and gui's that are easy to embed via EU made web frameworks like drupal. ( React to be avoided as it's from meta ) That way you see the shop on the individual site but also can create aggregators that look like ebay or ammazon but are federated.
I think htmx is an ideal framework for such a purpose
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ITT: OP has an "idea" and no money. Please do all the work.
We are not your thinktank bro
I think op sees us as exactly that. His thinktank. Isn't that kinda the whole point of a social network?
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This is surprisingly one of the few actual useful uses of blockchain. Business tried to shove it in everywhere and it didn't make sense because blockchain is a way to audit federated separate instances - which businesses are not. They're a single monolithic structure, and they don't need the trust - they already have it. They're themselves, they just have to trust their own internal teams.
We, on the otherhand, are the perfect use for it. A way to say X person paid Y person for this product on this day at this time, X person now has the authority to rate Y person for how they did. Immutable, impossible to fake.
Exactly xmr has been doing this for the markets on the dark web for years now. Escrow reviews ratings seller trust etc.
I fear the idea of crypto has been so poisoned by scammers and bullshit that the average person had forgotten it actually has value
