A few weeks ago Shopify COO, Harvey Finkelstein was on CNBC SquawkBox talking about - well Shopify. I came to talk about messaging though. And that term they keep using "retail operating system".

"We are not just an eCommerce platform, we are a retail operating system."

I don't love it.

Why?

• It sounds similar. Who knows what the difference between a platform and an operating system is? Bueller?

• It's opaque. No one outside of a developer really has any idea what an operating system does.

• As someone who has developed multithreaded operating systems in grad school, no one cares to know what it means. Catch an interrupt, push the stack, switch to the other process, pop the stack. Uh, right.

• Doesn't communicate any new information. After reading the term, do you learn more? Or are you just as confused about what Shopify does? A hint is it's always followed up by "what that means is..."

The best part 

It doesn't communicate value. Any OS is essentially free, in case you hadn't noticed. Linux won that battle and now even Microsoft can't charge for its operating system.

Tying yourself to a "free" idea may also not be the best way to communicate value.

Shopify is an eCommerce service provider.

"Shopify: Retail is Dead. eCommerce is the future. Get with it."