The “2.0” in the name is, of course, a play on the 2.0 naming craze of the day but the subject of the article I wrote for Web 2.0 Journal is real (see “E-Commerce 2.0” – The Velvet Revolution).

I started thinking about these issues while still at Macromedia working on the next-generation of user experiences on the Web and at the same time serving on the OASIS Web Services Component Model (WSCM) TC. By that time it was clear that despite the busting of the bubble, e-commerce was going strong and would be an obvious place to apply some Web 2.0 concepts. More recently, the team at Allurent, where I’m an investor, contributed significantly to my thinking as well as conversations with friends like Colin Bryar at Amazon, Robert Chea at PowerReviews and Kirthi Kalyanam at SCU (who, BTW, is organizing a bootcamp at Shop.org in NYC in a few weeks–two panels will cover Web 2.0 as it relates to e-commerce).

The three trends driving e-commerce 2.0 that I describe are:

• Richer user experiences (see Allurent’s demos)
• Accelerating disaggregation (see PowerReview’s experience or ARPU’s Try & Buy [though you really have to experience this on a partner site])
• Social commerce (where are the great demos???)

The obvious fourth trend that I didn’t mention is the drive towards generating unique content (often user-generated) tied to the e-commerce experience. It’s hard to say how this becomes real and scales beyond reviews & recommendations and that’s why I didn’t mention it.

Etailers are under pressure to differentiate in a world of nearly perfect information. Maintaining the e-commerce 1.0 status quo is not an option.