eCommerce Strategy Consultant - Rick Watson - RMW Commerce Consulting

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My prediction on Facebook's most significant eCommerce contribution

I really think Facebook’s most significant contribution to eCommerce over the next 10 years will be augmented reality and virtual reality.

For Facebook to provide new and exciting tools for advertisers is fine and Facebook has a tremendous scale, so for a lot of people, it's really great.

BUT IT'S NOT "WOW".

The fact that any individual or brand could open up a shop on the world's largest discovery marketplace is also a fascinating opportunity. But it's still not where I think Facebook has the potential to transform the industry. There is no large-scale platform thinking about AR and VR the same way Facebook is.

Facebook sees the potential to be innovative on a grand scale in a way that few other companies are committed to. As a technologist, I'm definitely interested to see what they come up with. Now, will I feel safe enough to adopt it? Maybe not.

But from my lens of eCommerce, it seems like it opens up a lot of possibilities if they build the platform in the right way, and are good stewards of it. Back in the day, not everyone loved Bill Gates. But almost everyone built applications for Windows.