immerse in eCommerce

When I saw Amazon was listed as E-Commerce rather than online shopping; ranked though it is one position below Taobao in popular websites, I wondered what the difference must be. I've been sat here two whole years and I can't tell you that much. I don't know about you but every time I look up the best of e-commerce or the biggest in e-commerce I see those well canvassed culprits staring back at me so let's move on.

If it's true that the largest e-merchants emanating from the US are such big names as Amazon, Apple, and Walmart, and that Australia pulls its weight with Kogan, Temple & Webster, Catch of the Day, The Iconic, JB Hi-Fi, Booktopia, Red Balloon, Lorna Jane and Dan Murphy's [Dick Smith was on this list but went under], eCommerce is as much about being a platform for sellers as a wholesale or retail site itself.

While this blog has never been about huckstering, there's little question that e-commerce here is meant to consider the vendor who uses a platform to sell their wares. This original from Inc. is worth reading in full since these are sites with some interesting ideas

1.  Shopify
2. BigCommerce
3. Magento
4. YoKart
5. Big Cartel

Open all ours

Online Shopping Sites

1. 1. Amazon
   2. eBay
   3.  Asos
   4. Walmart
   5. Etsy
   6. Mr Porter
   7. Alibaba
   8. Nasty Gal
   9. Zappos
   10. ModCloth 
    
2. [source: TopTeny.com] 
3. alright  I can't stand it any longer. If you look up number nine and all you see are philosophy and advertising and Amazon it's because there's a hyperlink to Zappos, who are shoesellers, at the bottom of the web page. Down there with Goodreads and IMDb.
4.  I know this is where I should leave well enough alone but it remains to be asked whether these are external links or report to the mothership Amazon. There are eleven hyperlinks that name reference Amazon so this could either suggest that Amazon's upfront about what it owns or has a strong affiliation with, or they are large enough and so all consuming as to manage those other businesses at this level. It might be case by case but calling 

As entertainment

1. Metacritic.com
2. Crackle
3. Hulu
4. FunnyOrDie
5. Tumblr
6. A.V. Club
7. IMDb
8. AintItCool
9. Gawker
10. Rotten Tomatoes

Import all report all support all

 

Instead of sticking with what Alexa has deemed portals I wanted to see what the search engine brought up. One site suggested that portals could encompass anything really while another qualified a source of various ready services or information while not in itself selling something (like Amazon does). I'm not sure what the name alludes to but YoLinux have a good handle on the purpose of a portal.

I don't know whether 'internet services and products' is more encompassing even than a portal but Google is nonetheless not described as a portal whereas Yahoo, QQ, Sohu, Sina Corp, Yahoo! Japan, MSN, Naver, Mail.ru, FC2 and Universo Online are.
The only two websites of type 'Internet services and products' are Google and Yandex on Alexa and SimilarWeb's web rankings.

 

Have a look at this

Top video sharing websites

• YouTube
• Netflix
• Vimeo
• Yahoo! Screen
• Dailymotion
• Hulu
• Vube
• Twitch
• LiveLeak
• Vine

e-searchin' sea-urchin

According to eBiz MBA, the most popular search engines are#

1. Google
2. Bing
3. Yahoo! Search
4. Baidu
5. Ask
6. Aol search
7. DuckDuckGo
8. WolframAlpha
9. Yandex
10. WebCrawler
11. Search
12. dogpile
13. ixquick
14. excite
15. info

 Straight up I'll confess I only quoted their whole fifteen search engines because there was a time there where I used Dogpile extensively.  And I was intrigued by a site calling itself Search; though Ask and Info share this characteristic of being both descriptive and nondescript.
 

Too hoarse race

The Washington Post article "From Lycos to Ask Jeeves to Facebook: Tracking the 20 most popular web sites every year since 1996" makes for fascinating reading. (Do bear in mind it is from the end of 2014 and three years is a fairly long time in cyberspace.)
. The many that have fallen by the wayside and the few powerhouses that continue to dominate.

The top website every year 1996-2013 (they'd want you to pay for 2014)

AOL
AOL
AOL
AOL
AOL
AOL
AOL
AOL
Yahoo
 Yahoo
 Yahoo
 Yahoo
 Yahoo
Google
 Google
 Yahoo
 Google
Google
 Yahoo

then I think it would be

Google
Google

No word from China (the search continues)

I was going to include the Chinese sites Tencent QQ and Taobao in the previous post but it's just got too long and I doubted my ability to get successful links for everything on a portal and an online shopping site not speaking the language. I hadn't heard of these before and I vouchsafe neither have any of those likely to read this blog.
My only curiosity was in how far down the list eBay was; talking about online shopping.

QQ is one of three social network functions under Tencent, along with Weixin/We Chat and Qzone. There are payment processors. Let's focus on the entertainment:

• Tencent Games
• China Reading Limited (Tencent Literature)
• Tencent Comic
• Tencent Pictures
• QQ Music
• Penguin e-Sports
• NOW Live
• Interest Tribe
• Tencent classroom
• Nextradio

and information

• QQ.com
• Tencent News
• Tencent Video
• Tencent Microblog

 then there are utilities, platform and artificial intelligence. Perhaps it's in the nature of a portal to have this assortment of different services.

Taobao 

• Computer & Office
• Phones & Accessories
• Men's Clothing
• Women's Clothing
• Consumer Electronics
• Jewelry
• Home & Garden
• Luggage & Bags
• Shoes
• Mother & Kids
• Sports & Outdoors
• Health & Beauty 
• Watches

Since we can't very well list all those Baidu services or get into controversies surrounding what people discovered using their search engine, some of their award-winning products include DU Battery Saver, DU Speed Booster, MoboMarket, DU Browser, Facemoji Keyboard, DU Flashlight, DU Security, DU Cleaner, DU Privacy Vault, DU Antivirus, Photo Wonder, DU Caller, DU Recorder, ES File Explorer, Simeji.