Connecting SMBs and The Massive Long Tail of e-Commerce

How many SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses) exist out there that have
little or no access to e-commerce channels?

Today, in order to put their offers out for the web to see, any given
Business needs to:
* Design and build a website or store
* Invest in SEO / Ads
* Build a community or somehow exploit social media to get their message across

And all that so your products can be found while searching for text
keywords or targeted by inaccurate ( at best ) affiliate platforms!

Sounds like a lousy deal to me ;)
An incremental improvement over current commerce, yes. But nothing radical.
Customers still have to "walk" into a store.

And you have to build that store, paint it, and make it look attractive.

Hmm. 

You know what I would like?
I would like to write my offerings in a spreadsheet from my notebook
and have them automatically "connect" to a global, structured Database
where affiliates, matchmaking systems, Google, etc take care of
finding and sending me a potential buyer with 90% specificity.

I give it two years before this becomes mainstream. Google already
bought Metaweb, and Good Relations + Linked Data are penetrating fast.
In two years I will be able to update a spreadsheet ( or a backend )
and get instant, highly specific visibility. No need for a designer or
even for a pitch.

Also. Keep in mind that this is not a "secondary" idea. This is an
innovation at the core of the web: Commerce and Advertising will
change.

We call this Linked Open Commerce ( in relation to Linked Data, one of
the potential tech enablers ). But it will come in many shapes, forms
and labels.

http://linkedopencommerce.com/

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