Slightly off topic, but I am interested in people's thoughts on whether it would be feasible to develop a (semi) decentralised market place / directory, i.e. open source alternative to say eBay or Amazon.
The concept would be to use blockchains to store info such as meta data on active products, past transactions, buyer and seller ratings, etc. More detailed product information (i.e. images, detailed descriptions) would still need to be stored on the mechants server. There would need to be a set of APIs to allow product searches, transactions, ratings, etc. There would also need to provision for archiving of old transactions to maintain blockchain size.
If it were technically possible to develop, it would be the ideal market place to promote bitcoin.
Topic: Why is there no massive directory of everything for sale on the internet? (Read 602 times)
July 16, 2013, 06:40:41 AM
July 16, 2013, 01:05:13 AM
You can upload all of your product information to Google. The products will display with normal search results.
http://www.google.com/merchants/
This is free (used to be when I did it anyway) and is different thanGoogle Shopping or Adwords.
Actually Google Shopping doesn't use scraped data, it uses the data pushed by merchants.http://www.google.com/merchants/
This is free (used to be when I did it anyway) and is different than
(The info pushed by merchants is also displayed in standard Google search results.)
July 16, 2013, 12:54:49 AM
I'm at a loss as to why the OP believes there isn't such a thing to the extent that it is possible. There are product for sale aggregating sites which do use intermediary product databases seeded by retailers.
July 16, 2013, 12:53:57 AM
Why is there no "mother of all websites" for retailed goods? It seems like it would be a fairly simple thing to do. Retailers batch-submit the goods they have for sale to a given website. The website tracks price, qty in stock, what the item is, and useful specifications, matching up items as appropriate via UPC barcodes or whatever other unique identifiers they might have.
I suppose what I am picturing is sort of like Google Shopping, but with categorized items (enabling browsing by category) that are retailer-pushed rather than bot-scraped. Sort of like the eBay of retailing. eBay + Google Shopping, then, but without multiple listings per item. Amazon sort of has the right idea, but everything goes through them, so if a vendor isn't set up to sell through Amazon, you don't see their goods.
As a consumer, I would love to have such a website with comprehensive, up-to-date information on who to buy from and what the best prices are. Why hasn't a project like this been undertaken?
I suppose what I am picturing is sort of like Google Shopping, but with categorized items (enabling browsing by category) that are retailer-pushed rather than bot-scraped. Sort of like the eBay of retailing. eBay + Google Shopping, then, but without multiple listings per item. Amazon sort of has the right idea, but everything goes through them, so if a vendor isn't set up to sell through Amazon, you don't see their goods.
As a consumer, I would love to have such a website with comprehensive, up-to-date information on who to buy from and what the best prices are. Why hasn't a project like this been undertaken?
Because directories are inefficient and silly, due to the volume of data that is largely irrelevant to an individual user. That's why Yahoo, which began as simply a directory of sites, got trumped by Google, which crawls and indexes.
Just use google shopping. It's a far improved version of what you're looking for.
shopping.google.com
July 16, 2013, 12:46:20 AM
You can upload all of your product information to Google. The products will display with normal search results.
http://www.google.com/merchants/
This is free (used to be when I did it anyway) and is different than Google Shopping or Adwords.
http://www.google.com/merchants/
This is free (used to be when I did it anyway) and is different than Google Shopping or Adwords.
July 16, 2013, 12:38:59 AM
In Canada we have this: http://www.shopbot.ca
Just a quick look seems like that's the sort of directory I am looking for......But for 200 countries and in 6000 languages, not to mention the various currencies of which rumor has it there's a new kid on the block.
July 15, 2013, 06:33:37 PM
In Canada we have this: http://www.shopbot.ca
Just a quick look seems like that's the sort of directory I am looking for... 
July 15, 2013, 06:32:43 PM
In Canada we have this: http://www.shopbot.ca
July 15, 2013, 06:30:10 PM
Why is there no "mother of all websites" for retailed goods? It seems like it would be a fairly simple thing to do. Retailers batch-submit the goods they have for sale to a given website. The website tracks price, qty in stock, what the item is, and useful specifications, matching up items as appropriate via UPC barcodes or whatever other unique identifiers they might have.
I suppose what I am picturing is sort of like Google Shopping, but with categorized items (enabling browsing by category) that are retailer-pushed rather than bot-scraped. Sort of like the eBay of retailing. eBay + Google Shopping, then, but without multiple listings per item. Amazon sort of has the right idea, but everything goes through them, so if a vendor isn't set up to sell through Amazon, you don't see their goods.
As a consumer, I would love to have such a website with comprehensive, up-to-date information on who to buy from and what the best prices are. Why hasn't a project like this been undertaken?
I suppose what I am picturing is sort of like Google Shopping, but with categorized items (enabling browsing by category) that are retailer-pushed rather than bot-scraped. Sort of like the eBay of retailing. eBay + Google Shopping, then, but without multiple listings per item. Amazon sort of has the right idea, but everything goes through them, so if a vendor isn't set up to sell through Amazon, you don't see their goods.
As a consumer, I would love to have such a website with comprehensive, up-to-date information on who to buy from and what the best prices are. Why hasn't a project like this been undertaken?
How will you motivate the retailers to push their data? Sure, you could argue it would bring them traffic, but that only applies to the retailer with the best price.
Certainly there's a mass-acceptance barrier to it, I am just surprised no efforts have been made on that front.
July 15, 2013, 06:28:11 PM
Why is there no "mother of all websites" for retailed goods? It seems like it would be a fairly simple thing to do. Retailers batch-submit the goods they have for sale to a given website. The website tracks price, qty in stock, what the item is, and useful specifications, matching up items as appropriate via UPC barcodes or whatever other unique identifiers they might have.
I suppose what I am picturing is sort of like Google Shopping, but with categorized items (enabling browsing by category) that are retailer-pushed rather than bot-scraped. Sort of like the eBay of retailing. eBay + Google Shopping, then, but without multiple listings per item. Amazon sort of has the right idea, but everything goes through them, so if a vendor isn't set up to sell through Amazon, you don't see their goods.
As a consumer, I would love to have such a website with comprehensive, up-to-date information on who to buy from and what the best prices are. Why hasn't a project like this been undertaken?
I suppose what I am picturing is sort of like Google Shopping, but with categorized items (enabling browsing by category) that are retailer-pushed rather than bot-scraped. Sort of like the eBay of retailing. eBay + Google Shopping, then, but without multiple listings per item. Amazon sort of has the right idea, but everything goes through them, so if a vendor isn't set up to sell through Amazon, you don't see their goods.
As a consumer, I would love to have such a website with comprehensive, up-to-date information on who to buy from and what the best prices are. Why hasn't a project like this been undertaken?
How will you motivate the retailers to push their data? Sure, you could argue it would bring them traffic, but that only applies to the retailer with the best price.
July 15, 2013, 06:26:16 PM
Why is there no "mother of all websites" for retailed goods? It seems like it would be a fairly simple thing to do. Retailers batch-submit the goods they have for sale to a given website. The website tracks price, qty in stock, what the item is, and useful specifications, matching up items as appropriate via UPC barcodes or whatever other unique identifiers they might have.
I suppose what I am picturing is sort of like Google Shopping, but with categorized items (enabling browsing by category) that are retailer-pushed rather than bot-scraped. Sort of like the eBay of retailing. eBay + Google Shopping, then, but without multiple listings per item. Amazon sort of has the right idea, but everything goes through them, so if a vendor isn't set up to sell through Amazon, you don't see their goods.
As a consumer, I would love to have such a website with comprehensive, up-to-date information on who to buy from and what the best prices are. Why hasn't a project like this been undertaken?
I suppose what I am picturing is sort of like Google Shopping, but with categorized items (enabling browsing by category) that are retailer-pushed rather than bot-scraped. Sort of like the eBay of retailing. eBay + Google Shopping, then, but without multiple listings per item. Amazon sort of has the right idea, but everything goes through them, so if a vendor isn't set up to sell through Amazon, you don't see their goods.
As a consumer, I would love to have such a website with comprehensive, up-to-date information on who to buy from and what the best prices are. Why hasn't a project like this been undertaken?
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