Top 10 eCommerce Developments
Category: Internet... Tech...
Posted Wednesday, July 18, 2007 at 03:16 PM [GMT-6]

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) last week rolled out its list of the "Ten Most Significant eCommerce Developments of the Last Decade," (PDF). The list includes the following:

1. Google (Sept. 1998)
2. Broadband Penetration of US Internet Users Reaches 50% (June 2004)
3. eBay Auctions (Launched Sept. 1997)
4. Amazon.com (IPO May 1997)
5. Google Ad Words (2000)
6. Open Standards (HTML 4.0 released - 1997)
7. Wi-Fi (802.11 launched - 1997)
8. User-Generated Content (YouTube 2005)
9. iTunes (2001)
10. BlackBerry (1999)

It's a pretty eclectic list, containing items that are almost universally familiar (Google) to those that are downright geeky (Open Standards).

If I'd come up with the list, I'd have put PayPal in there, somewhere (perhaps in place of the BlackBerry). PayPal (started around 2000) wasn't the first online payment system, but it was the pioneer in terms of making the average surfer comfortable about conducting business via the web.

An interesting sidenote is that the SIIA chose YouTube to represent "user generated content," even though blogging is much more widespread and arguably more influential. However, blogs existed long before 1997, and thus don't make the ten-year rule.

Additional observations about the items on this list are found here.

Tip o'the hat to MLB