You have to excuse him, he just woke from his dry January binge induced coma

One way forward I see is the fediverse. If we can create a platform that will be able to host a storefront for specific items, have it connect to other storefronts by some sort of federated search and cart system, allow a single point of transaction for a cart that spans multiple stores, and be able for the host to easily spin up an instance, that to me seems like it could start picking up traction easily and quickly. Think of etsy, consolidated into a specific niche. Expand that to thousands of instances with their own niches, able to connect to one another for a seamless shopping experience for the end user. Small business owners could run an instance of their own if they’d like. Or someone with some small equity could start an instance and focus solely on customer service, returns, overhead of site management, etc (maybe I’m dumb and this etc is bigger than I realize), and basically allow individuals to rent out a virtual booth in a digital flea market.

Brilliant maneuver

I use Sygic and I don’t plan to switch. Its got a lot of great features for free, and not only do they use OSM, they contribute back to it with their content team, making sure information stays up to date for popular stores and sights. Downside is the voice navigation is locked behind their premium subscription. But i think its super valuable at $20/year, plus it allows you to turn your phone into a dashcam which I really like, and even more fun features using the camera. Sorry for sounding like an ad read, but I really like the app, and the company behind it.

I want to go off of this slightly and ask a similar question. Why is there no shopping network using activitypub? An open source replacement for facebook marketplace, ebay, etsy, and ideally amazon too. Seems like something that could really put a dent in mega corporations revenue and userbase, or maybe I’m just dreaming too much lol.