In Part 1 we looked at the evolution of eCommerce to date. Then we took a small detour to revisit Paul Ford’s science fiction post about eCommerce dated July 2002.

Google did not follow Paul’s road map. So the prize has not yet been claimed. In this post we look at some of the startups working to claim that prize.

Good Relations

The Good Relations name does not fit. It makes one think this is a PR firm. But then you see the shopping cart:

“Web Ontology for eCommerce” does not quicken the pulse of the shoppers in my household. But then they are not going after consumers, this is designed to appeal to developers. It is one piece of a solution, one part of the puzzle. And quite an important one.

Ontology, blah! Do we really need one just for shopping? It seems like so much work.

Yes, we do need one for semantic eCommerce. The vision for semantic eCommerce is that any seller anywhere can put data on their site in a common format so that buyers can easily find it.

Here is how Good Relations describe what they have:

“GoodRelations is a language that can be used to describe very precisely what your business is offering. Some people call GoodRelations a “data dictionary”, others prefer “schema” or “ontology”. But the name of the thing is not important. Important is that you can use GoodRelations to create a small data package that describes your products and their features and prices, your stores and opening hours, payment options and the like.

You simply paste this data package into your Web page using W3C’s RDFa format. That’s all!”

For this to get traction there are four things that have to happen:

1. Merchants have to be motivated. This is not hard. If merchants sell direct instead of via big aggregators such as Amazon their gross margins improve. “Improve gross margins” are the magic words for merchants. So the merchant tells his SEO person; can you do this? This is where # 2 comes in.

2. It has to be made really simple. The interface provided by Good Relations could do with some improvement. But that could be easily fixed. So, then the SEO folk say: “we could but who knows if this is the right standard. I suggest we wait and see for a bit”. So now we are onto # 3:

3. Lots of merchants have to align behind THIS ontology/schema/dictionary/controlled vocabulary. When something like XBRL gets traction, one reason is that somebody with some clout like the SEC says “do this. No, not that, this. And do it by this date. Or else!” It is hard to see where that external push may come from in this case. Maybe this is where # 4 comes in :

4. An entrepreneur has to put this and other parts of the puzzle into a package that gets shoppers pouring in. Yes, this is a bit like saying we need some magic. And you cannot forecast magic.

So Good Relations needs some entrepreneurial magic to get traction.

What about the other pieces of the puzzle?

PaySwarm: Micropayments

Manu Sporny, who we interviewed related to RDFa in HTML5 is behind PaySwarm:

This is open source and designed to be an open standard. This, like Good Relations, is a tool for merchants to take back control.

Add that to Good Relations and the puzzle starts to build.

The Open Marketplace Manifesto

The Open Marketplace Manifesto is driven by folks like Manu Sporny of PaySwarm, Dr. Martin Hepp of Good Relations and Kingsley Idehen. Their mission:

“This group is for everyone that is interested in the evolution of media, marketing and advertising away from Marketing-Industrial Complex and towards the Open Marketplace.”

Enter Twitter Annotations?

One missing piece of the puzzle may come via Twitter Annotations. While we think of Twitter today as microblogging, similar to status update in Facebook, this may change.

Traders understand freshness and merchants are basically traders. They buy at one price and try to sell higher. The curse of the merchant is dead inventory. They need to move that inventory.

The real time web can make that happen.

Dell did that in the PC business: they used real-time supply chains to eliminate inventory, building each PC to order. They turned negative cash flow (working capital that you need to expand) into positive working capital cash flow: you get an order, get paid, and then you pay the supplier.

Freshness matters in many markets:

* In food (obviously)
* In fashion
* In entertainment (this movie/band is “hot” and sells now)

Twitter Annotations could be a simple way to connect buyers and sellers in real time:

* Seller tweets “this is what I have right now”. My chicken has just laid eggs.

* Buyer follows “tell me when local farmers have fresh eggs”.

That requires a controlled vocabulary. Good Relations have that. Twitter could provide the message bus to connect buyer and seller.

SemTechBiz is Less Than 2 Weeks Away

The Semantic Tech & Business Conference (SemTechBiz) is coming to San Francisco on June 3-7! Join us for case studies, innovative panels, tutorials, and keynotes that will provide you with practical advice, hands-on guidance, and breakthrough approaches to solving business problems with semantic technology. Passes go up $200 at the door. Sign up now and save !