Possible solution to monolithic shopping sites

Larsenist · January 7, 2022

I just watched the WAN Show clip where they talked about why they still use Amazon and it gave me an idea.

What if there was a shopping site where none of the product listings were on the site itself?

Instead of selling products, this site broadcasted product listings.

Its child sites would use an API so that the parent site could automatically generate a product page.

The consumer could shop across the site and not even know they're viewing listings from other sites (unless they payed attention).

For link sharing, it could be like https://parent.com/child.com/product-listing/

For example, the child site would input information like:

Product.Name: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-core, 32-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor

Product.Brand: AMD

Product.Description: The best processor for gamers meets the best processor for creators, with 16 cores and 32 processing threads

Product.Type: Processor

Price: $799.00

Shipping.Option.1: 2 Day

Shipping.Price.1: $2

Shipping.Option.2: 3-5 Day

Shipping.Price.2: $0

Feature.Processor.Speed: 4.9 GHz

Feature.Processor.Cores: 16

Feature.Processor.Threads: 32

Feature.Processor.Watts: 105

<html>More Information/Advertising</html>

This could be a centralized approach where websites could pay a small fee to the central site to list their products

or

It could be implemented in the way that the Fediverse implements decentralized social networking and streaming services

If you're unfamiliar with the Fediverse, you could for instance create your own site or join one using a software like Mastodon, Misskey, or Hubzilla.

Then from that site, you can post and view others' posts from your instance or you can view posts from across the Fediverse on different sites.

Fosstodon is a site that uses the Mastodon software to connect to the Fediverse and from there I can see posts from other instances like Silkheart, Neckbeard, or Bubbletea

Fosstodon could also block other instances from reaching it, or I as a user could block them from reaching just me.

The Fediverse also includes streaming services like PeerTube which allows you to create or join a site for videos