The document provides a short history of eCommerce from its early stages to the present. It describes the evolution from big warehouses fulfilling orders to leveraging social media and recommendations. It also discusses how the Great Recession impacted online spending and led to the rise of new semantic eCommerce intermediaries that take small cuts on large transaction volumes. The document previews that part 2 will discuss challenges in building semantic eCommerce platforms.

1. Semantic Wave Hits eCommerce Part 1: Where Have We Come From? A short history of eCommerce.

2. Web Consumers We have lots of lovely books, choose one and pay, please. Big Old Warehouse With Lots Of Pick & Packers 1.0: Big Old Warehouse Is Still Fewer Bricks Than Lots Of Retail Shops

3. Lots More Web Consumers We have lots of lovely books and lots of everything else. Buy more. You liked THIS, so you might like THAT. 1.5: Let Mom & Pop Do The Pick & Pack & Take Inventory Risk Small Retail Partners That Sell Via Amazon

4. Lots More Web Consumers We have lots of lovely books and lots of everything else. Buy more. Fred liked THIS, so you might also like THIS. 1.7: Let Bloggers Do The Selling Small Retail Partners That Sell Via Amazon Bloggers Become Affiliates

5. Phase Transition # 1: We All Gone Social 1.0: Amazon is winner 1.5: Amazon is STILL the winner 1.7: Amazon is STILL the winner Yes, but Google still makes a ton more money from the simple job of selling clicks. 2.X: We All Gone Social, Its All Change Now 2.0: Having way too much fun being social to worry about commerce 2.4: e-commerce with a social twist: Vente Privee, Gilte, Groupon, etc $$$$$$$

6. Facebook Attempts To Become A Gigantic Like Vacuum 2.7: This Is Now SERIOUS Money Folks Like = Recommendation = Key To eCommerce Google: worried Amazon: worried Microsoft: waiting eBay: worried

7. Phase Transition # 2: The Great Recession Use The ATM In Your House Use VC $$$ To Run Your Social Media Venture Nasty Bug: Crash & Recession Consumers think more about how to earn money than spend money The Web is no longer a mystery. JoeSixPack can now sell globally Before After The “crumbs from the rich man’s table”, the payouts to “partners”, no longer seem good enough

8. Semantic eCommerce Intermediaries Take A Thin Slice On Massive Volumes* * Think NASDAQ more than Amazon, Google or Facebook Lots Of Buyers Lots Of Sellers Mom & Pop get a fair shake

9. Drawing a cloud with the words “semantic ecommerce” is easy. How on earth do we build semantic ecommerce? Stay tuned for Part 2.