Reading up on ecommerce
44 deep · digging since nov 21, 25
- Should I Buy an Area Rug on Etsy?
A buyer receives guidance on evaluating rug quality, pricing, and return policies before purchasing from Etsy vendors.
- Agentic commerce for every developer: The Spring '26 Edition
Shopify's Spring '26 Edition opens agentic commerce to all developers with UCP and Catalog API, rebuilds app infrastructure and billing.
- EBay, the Old-School E-Commerce Site, Finds Its Place in Modern Retail
EBay has repositioned itself as a marketplace for collectibles and high-end goods, which attracted an unwelcome takeover bid from GameStop.
- Alexa is moving into Amazon․com
Amazon integrates Alexa Plus into its shopping site, replacing Rufus, enabling AI-powered product search, price alerts, and auto-purchasing across devices.
- Amazon launches 30-minute delivery across the US
Amazon launches Amazon Now, a 30-minute delivery service for thousands of items across dozens of U.S. cities, undercutting competitors on price for Prime members.
- GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay
GameStop made a $55.5B cash-and-stock offer for eBay, proposing CEO Ryan Cohen lead a turnaround with $2B cost cuts and claiming eBay could rival Amazon.
- Amazon’s Car Sales Bet Is Getting Bigger With New Brands and More Cities - WSJ
Amazon has expanded its Amazon Autos car sales program to over 130 cities, adding Kia, Mazda, Subaru, Chevrolet, and Jeep to its offerings.
- SQLite in Production: Lessons from Running a Store on a Single File
Running an e-commerce store on SQLite reduces infrastructure complexity but requires care with concurrent writes, JSON types, and backups.
- Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website
Walmart's test of 200,000 products via ChatGPT's Instant Checkout found conversion rates three times lower than directing users to its website, leading it to drop the feature for its own integrated shopping experience.
- Amazon Launches 1-Hour Delivery in Hundreds of U.S. Cities - WSJ
Amazon launches one-hour and three-hour delivery in hundreds of U.S. cities to compete with Walmart's growing threat.
- Agentic Commerce
AI agents are shifting commerce from platform-controlled discovery to buyer-driven search, with Amazon, ChatGPT, and B2B sourcing tools like Accio leading early adoption.
- I Hired a Lab to Counterfeit-Test a Dozen Suspicious Beauty Products I Bought Online. Every Single One Had a Problem.
An undercover investigation found that every one of a dozen suspect beauty products purchased online from major retailers failed authenticity or safety testing.
- Amazon accused of widespread scheme to inflate prices across the economy
Hacker News commenters debate California's antitrust lawsuit accusing Amazon of forcing sellers to inflate prices on competing platforms, harming consumers.
- 39 Best Cheap Valentine’s Day Gifts (Mostly) Under $25 of 2026
Wirecutter's 2026 list of 39 Valentine's Day gifts under $25 provides budget-friendly options for expressing love without overspending.
- Saks Fifth Avenue Bankruptcy Revives Debate Over the Future of Department Stores - The New York Times
Saks Fifth Avenue's bankruptcy filing revives debate about whether traditional department stores can survive against e-commerce and changing consumer shopping preferences.
- Monetizing AI surfaces: Ads in the age of AI
OpenAI is testing intent-based ads and affiliate commerce in ChatGPT, with potential to become a $10B+ business if it builds effective measurement and avoids compromising answer quality.
- Postal Arbitrage
By purchasing items under $0.78 with free Prime shipping and adding a gift note, one can send a physical object for less than the cost of a postage stamp.
- Under the Hood: Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) - Google Developers Blog
Google and partners launched the Universal Commerce Protocol, an open-source standard for agentic commerce that standardizes secure, seamless shopping across AI surfaces.
- Where AI is headed in 2026 - Foundation Capital
Enterprise AI hits production, decision traces become new moat, AI security surges, agents dominate e-commerce, Gemini overtakes ChatGPT, and an AI lab goes public in 2026.
- AI Marketing Examples: 13 Times AI Actually Delivered
13 brands used AI to cut costs and production time without replacing human strategy, achieving results like doubled sales, 81% lower cost-per-click, and 10 million viral views.
- I sell onions on the Internet (2019)
A web developer serendipitously buys VidaliaOnions.com at auction and builds a successful niche business selling sweet onions directly to customers.
- Amazon faces a dilemma — fight AI shopping agents, or join them
Amazon faces a dilemma between blocking external AI shopping agents like OpenAI's Instant Checkout and partnering with them, as the company risks losing control over e-commerce transactions to these agents.
- The Most Popular Wirecutter-Approved Gifts of 2025
A list of the 100 most-purchased Wirecutter-approved gifts of 2025 based on reader purchases.
- Shopify merchants can now sell products through AI chatbots
Shopify enables merchants to sell products directly through AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot in its winter Editions update.
- Same Product, Same Store, but on Instacart, Prices Might Differ - The New York Times
Instacart displays different prices for the same product and store to different users, illustrating how digital platforms enable personalized pricing that may drive overall prices higher.
- Shopify Breaks Down on Busy Cyber Monday - WSJ
Shopify suffered a Cyber Monday outage that disrupted merchant operations but was resolved, with browsing unaffected.
- A Surprise When Your Package Arrives: You Have to Pay the Tariff - The New York Times
The end of a tariff exemption on goods under $800 now requires U.S. shoppers to pay extra tariff fees before delivery of their imported packages.
- Perplexity says its AI personal shopper ‘puts you first’
Perplexity launches a free AI shopping assistant that remembers user preferences and enables direct purchases via PayPal, targeting holiday shoppers.
- Faux Jewels and Slimming Belts: Why Shopping on TikTok Is a Lot Like QVC - The New York Times
TikTok Shop's U.S. growth mirrors QVC's model, using influencer ads that resemble TV infomercials to sell goods.
- Introducing shopping research in ChatGPT
OpenAI launches shopping research in ChatGPT, a conversational tool that researches products and builds personalized buyer's guides using GPT-5 mini.
Takes
http://knockoff.shopping is functional on iOS Safari! now just need daddy apple to approve it. 🫣
@Shpigford
Knockoff is now live! Filter out the knockoff crap brands on Amazon. Sorry to brands like WNPETHOME, EHEYCIGA, YXYL, LU&MN, JOYIN, TOMY, GODONLIF, YOOJEE, LINGTENG, LANEIGE, VISCOO, BIODANCE, COOFANDY, BALENNZ, TOSY and LUENX. https://knockoff.shopping
@Shpigford
built a little chrome extension that lets you dim (or hide!) all the crap, mass-produced, fake brands on amazon. should i release it?
@Shpigford
One agent runs 99.98% of Gumroad
@shl
look sometimes you need to throw AI at the big problems: like buying the best can opener in the world @nwilliams030 is tired of buying cheap crap. paid influencers, fake reviews, dropshipped garbage -- so she build a @claudeai brain to find things worth buying. In this week's ep, she shows us how she: - catalogs her exact purchasing criteria - has claude help find quality products from 100 year old brands at the same price as amazon - raise red flags (PE acqusitions!) in instagram feed products - use cowork to manage complicated returns Full episode on yt:
@clairevo
Built an internal wholesale growth engine for @SuperFanToys… * Uses Google to find toy stores, gift shops and bookstores in a given city * Scrapes their website to learn what they specialize in * Finds exact contact info for the buyer * Scores likelihood that they’d be a good fit for the types of products we sell * Chooses specific products from our catalog and then writes a series of personalized outreach emails to send them with the goal of shipping them a sample box * If they respond positively and confirm a shipping address, it creates a comped order in Shopify with personalized sample items choosing products based on their location and store type (ex. starfish and sea turtles for an aquarium gift shop) * We ship those out as part of daily order fulfillment * System tracks delivery and a few days after it sends a follow up checking in with them, pushing towards helping them place a wholesale order * Outside of this process, if we get no reply to emails for 30 days, it generates and mails a postcard with a QR code to them! Absolute sorcery! Feels super niche, but wonder if any other e-commerce operations would be interested in it. 🤔
@Shpigford
silently been doing a little experiment with reviving the http://cedarandsail.com brand + product line. woke up to 13 orders. 🫣
@Shpigford
Agentic commerce works flawlessly when combining Browserbase + Link (@stripe's agent wallet): - Browse CLI explores the site & fills in order info - Link CLI detects the card form and spins up the payment request for me to review No x402 setup. No MPP flows. Zero configuration
@shreypandya
what we working on today? i've got an http://initialcommit.co project going, working on @tibo_maker's 90-day SEO sprint for http://replysocial.co and building an internal tool for scaling up the http://superfantastictoys.com wholesale operation!
@Shpigford
🏆 For the first time in a decade on @Stripe I've started winning disputes with my vibe coded dispute responder I used to ignore disputes so I almost always lost them, now I've started winning, this one is the first big dispute for $1,199 USD! Whenever a dispute comes in, my site gets a webhook notice from Stripe, it then starts collecting evidence and generates a PDF with entire user's details, when they signed up, and most importantly what they did in the app In this case the user used the app for months, generated thousands of photos then tried to get the money back from their bank The evidence has to be REALLY detailed, and REALLY good, which is why it's perfect to vibe code it, you can get quite detailed with different types of users and activity on your app, and put that all in the PDF I'm shocked because I again I never would win disputes before People in US especially abuse the [ chargeback ] or [ dispute ] en masse, unlike the rest of the world, it's easily built into their banking app next to every transaction, so it's one tap to get free stuff. And why not? You get free stuff! It's destructive for business owners like me on many levels, if I get over 1% disputes on my account, I risk getting shutdown permanently by Stripe, Visa and MasterCard, like permanently for life, not just my business but on my personal name too, it's ruthless Disputes are also super expensive for business owners: you don't just pay back the amount they disputed, for every dispute you pay $30, which you only get back if you win! But with AI we can now create our own tools to fight back against dispute abuse and finally win! 🎉
@levelsio
the Shopify AI Toolkit is here manage your store with your favorite agent Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, VS Code, and more
@Shopify
A new delightful way to Tinker with your latest ideas. Made with love by Shopify.
@tobi
https://t.co/mVw8YUoslZ
@ArtemXTech
Remember when I told you this was coming…Well...selling in @ChatGPTapp is now live!@Shopify merchants Glossier, @SPANX, and @SKIMS are the first to launch with more rolling out very very soon! https://t.co/ALMGJn2rYS
@harleyf