E-commerce evolution in Malaysia

Do you know what is E-commerce?

Electronic commerce, also known as E-commerce (EC). EC is the process of buying, selling, transferring or exchanging products, services or information via computer networks. It conducts the financial transaction in electronic means through Internet and other computer networks.

Let us have a look on the history of EC:

• 1960s - Businesses used computer networks to conduct electronic transactions. They used Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) system which enables companies to send documents such as invoices, order forms and shipping confirmation to other companies by computer.
• 1979 - American National Standards Institure launches ASC X12 standard, it is reliable in transferring large amounts of transactions. Michael Aldrich invented online shopping system which used videotex technology.
• 1981 - Thomson Holidays, the first company who used B2B online shopping.
• 1982 - France Telecom introduced Minitel and it was used for online ordering.
• 1984 - The first B2C online shopping mall is Gateshead SIS/Tesco and Mrs Snowball is the first online home shopper. At the same year, CompuServe launched the first EC service, which is Electronic Mall in USA and Canada.
• 1985 - Nissan UK sells cars and finance with credit checking to customers online.
• 1987 - Swreg provides software and shareware to authors to sell the products online by using electronic Merchant account.
• 1990 - Tim Berners-Lee used NeXT computer to write the first web browser, which is the World Wide Web, a hypertext-based web of information.
• 1994 - Netscape releases Navigator browser under the code name Mozilla and Netscape 1.0 is introduced to made transactions secure by using a security protocol called Secure Socket Layer. The first online bank opens. Pizza Hut offers online ordering on its Web page.
• 1995 - Jeff Bezos launches amazon.com. Dell and Cisco start using Internet for commercial transactions. eBay is founded as an AuctionWeb.
• 1998 - People can purchase Electronic postal stamps.
• 1999 - An eCompanies bought business.com. Napster, a peer-to-peer filesharing software launches.
• 2000 - The dot-com bubble burst.
• 2002 - eBay acquires PayPal. Niche retail companies founded with the concept of selling products through several targeted domains.
• 2003 - amazon.com posted its first yearly profit.
• 2007 - R.H.Donnelley acquired business.com.
• 2009 - amazon.com acquired zappos.com.
• 2010 - groupon.com rejects google's offer and paln to go ahead with an IPO.
• 2011 - eBay acquired GCI Commerce, a company which is running an online shopping sites for brick and mortar businesses.

Web 2.0

It is a new Internet tools and technologies which takes a concept of using the network as a platform for information sharing, customizing designs and collaboration on the World Wide Web. It allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in social media dialogue. Examples of Web 2.0 are social networking sites, wikis, blogs, video sharing sites, web applications and others.

Technologies used by Web 2.0:

• Ajax programming uses JavaScript to upload and download new data from web server.
• Asynchronous JavaScript - allows users to continue interact with the page, which data requests goin to the server and data coming back to the page are separated
• XML, JSON, DOM - used to transmit structure data and allow interactive user experience. Example, Google Docs used this technique to create a Web-based word processor.
• JavaScript frameworks
• Adobe Flex
• HTML

What Web 2.0 allows us to do:

• It allows users to retrieve information.
• It provides more user-interface, software and storage facilities through the browser.
• Users can provide and control the data.
• It encourages users to add value to the applications.

Refences:
http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/120739
http://money.howstuffworks.com/history-e-commerce1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0#Characteristics