Amazon - Excluding Mobile Commerce?

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ECS (E-Commerce Service) from Amazon is one of the best ways to make money on the Internet. They have spent ten years and over $1 billion developing a world-class web service that millions of customers use daily. Developers can build ECS interfaces to their applications that leverage the data used by www.amazon.com, including the items for sale, customer and seller reviews. This also includes most of the functionality that you see on their site, such as finding items, finding similar items, displaying reviews and product promotions. ECS is a web service and application programming interface (API) that is accessible with either SOAP or REST protocols. You can build your own web store to sell Amazon items or your own items, it's an engine you're getting. ECS is free but something alarming may be developing. A Canadian startup, TXTReviews, which allows people to get book and movie user ratings via text message, says they're being shut out of Amazon web services. Amazon admits that they limit access to mobile-focused companies to ECS. Presumably, this is because they say the mobile space is in its early stages. The Amazon infrastructure EC2 or S3 web services are free in exchange for driving traffic back to Amazon's site. On a mobile device, that may not be possible depending upon the availability of a suitable browser or a wide area wireless connection. TXTReviews uses SMS, not a web interface. Amazon would like customers to shop on their site, making this of mutual benefit for the developer and Amazon. Device limitation should not be a factor as new standards for m-commerce are required to facilitate true mobile commerce.

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About Paul Lopez

Paul Lopez Paul Lopez is a 20+ year technology veteran whose career has spanned multiple disciplines such as product management, software development, engineering, marketing, business development and operations... read more

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