Technology

Amazon has had a complicated relationship with small businesses over the years: on one hand, itlong been a channel for them to sell goods online to a wider audience; but on the other, some have lamented giving over too much customer &ownership& to it in the name of sales, and not being able to stand out and present their brand and products in anything other than Amazonformat.

But today, Amazon made a move to counterbalance some of that criticism: it launched a new portal itcalling Storefronts to celebrate mom-and-pop shops and other smaller merchants that sell through the platform.Amazon is starting this first in the US, focussing on some 20,000 merchants &from all 50 states& (note: none from other parts of the world). For some context, there are around 300,000 small businesses from the US selling on Amazon.com today.

Those getting highlighted on Storefronts are already merchants on Amazonplatform, but you could also see this as a way for Amazon to try to lure more merchants to do business there. Amazon is huge, but those small businesses have other options, including other marketplaces like eBay, or building their own sites and using something like Shopify to power them, or foregoeing &traditional& e-commerce routes altogether.

The idea is to bring a little more personality to the process of transaction, not unlike what you might get if you shop regularly at a small businesses when itin a physical location, and you might know the owner by name or she or he would know you. Storefronts will highlight different merchants in the mix with videos that profile the owners, and highlight a selection of items that they sell via Amazon. It will also feature the small businesses in a marketing campaign.

No links, however, to a homepage of their own or their physical stores, if the SMBs happen to have either.

&We&ve created a custom, one-stop shopping experience for customers looking for interesting, innovative and high quality products from American businesses from all across the country,& saidNicholas Denissen, VP forAmazon in a statement. &Amazon first invited businesses to sell onAmazonnearly two decades ago, and today, small and medium-sized businesses are a vital part of Amazonlarge selection and commitment to customers. We&re championing their success with this new store and a national advertising campaign featuring a successfulMichiganbusiness selling onAmazonto customers across the U.S. and worldwide.&

The rest of the Storefronts experience is essentially a portal through to the wider catalog of goods that you will find on Amazon, curated by subject areas likeBack to School,Halloween, Home, Kitchen,Pet Suppliesand Books; or themes such as &women-owned businesses& or &family-focused businesses& or &artisans&; and with an emphasis on products being sold by Storefronts merchants, with the products ultimately shown off in the Amazon layout that you know very well already.

Storefronts is built on a template that Amazon has used before: in 2015 it opened another portal called Launchpad that highlights mostly tech startups and sells the hardware and other products that they are building. It later expanded that to other markets outside the US, so you can see how Amazon might develop Storefronts down the line.

Online marketplaces — where smaller businesses sell items via third-party platforms like Amazon or eBay — have been one of the more enduring (perhaps the most enduring) business models over the many ups and downs of the world of e-commerce. You could argue that more traditional, direct-to-customer retail has partly died because of the rise of these marketplaces, but you cannot deny that they have also shown that customers continue to want to buy from these smaller producers and sellers, too.

&Since we started selling onAmazoninOctober 2016, our sales have nearly doubled. Due to our success, we have been able to hire new team members from our community, including full and part time jobs,& saidHolly Rutt in a statement. Rutt is the co-founder ofLittle Flower Soap Co., which is featured in Amazonfirst ad. &We believe that customers like to know the story behind what they&re buying. When there is worry about creating jobs, itreassuring for customers to know their purchases are helping sustain jobs in the U.S.&

Amazon has long countered criticism of its impact on SMBs by highlighting its positive impact. A recent study it published estimated thatsmall and medium-sized businesses selling onAmazoncreated more than 900,000 jobs globally.

Itthat time again, folks, time to say goodbye to a social media service from days past.

Following the shuttering of Klout earlier this year, now Path, the one-time rival to Facebook, is closing its doors, according to an announcement made today. (Yes, you may be surprised to learn that Path was still alive.)

The eight-year-old service will close down in one month — October 18 — but it will be removed from the App Store and Google Play on October 1. Any remaining users have until October 18 to download a copy of their data, which can be donehere.

Path was founded by former Facebook product managerDave Morin, and ex-Napster duo Dustin Mierau and Shawn Fanning . The company burst onto the scene in 2010 with a mobile social networking app that was visually pleasing and — importantly — limited to just 50 friends per user. That positioned itas a more private alternative to Facebook with some additional design bells and whistles, although the friend restriction was later lifted and then removed altogether.

At its peak, the service had around 15 million users and it was once raising money at a valuation of $500 million.Indeed, Google tried to buy it for $100 million when it was just months old. All in all, the startup raised $55 million from investors that included top Silicon Valley names like Index, Kleiner Perkins and Redpoint.

Facebook ultimately defeated Path, but it stole a number of features from its smaller rival

But looks fade, and social media is a tough place when you&re not Facebook, which today has over 1.5 billion active users and aggressively ‘borrowed& elements from Pathdesign back in the day.

Pathroad took a turn for the worse and the much-hyped startup lost staff, users and momentum (and user data). The company tried to launch a separate app to connected businesses and users — Path Talk — but that didn&t work and ultimately it wassold to KoreaKakao — a messaging and internet giant — in an undisclosed deal in 2015. Kakao bought the app because it was popular in Indonesia, the worldfourth-largest population where Path had four million users, and the Korean firm was making a major play for that market, which is Southeast Asialargest economy and a growing market for internet users.

However, Path hasn&t kicked on in the last three years and now Kakao is discarding it altogether.

&It is with deep regret that we announce that we will stop providing our beloved service, Path.We started Path in 2010 as a small team of passionate and experienced designers and engineers.Over the years we have tried to lay out our mission: through technology and design we aim to be a source of happiness, meaning, and connection to our users,& the company said in a statement.

Thanks Aulia