Reading List - Week of October 17

There was a tsunami of incredible eCommerce and technology news this week. Mozu, the cloud-based eCommerce platform just got acquired. European eCommerce companies want to compete with giant American etailers. Acquia Labs will soon reveal the future of the web. Ordering your food directly on Facebook or buying your next festival ticket is now a reality. The icing on the cake? Nintendo just unveiled its new gaming console, the Switch. For full stories read on.

Get ready for the Switch!

Source: Youtube

If you haven't watched it yet, you should check out the new Nintendo video introducing the Switch. After a year of rumor, the Switch is the latest gaming console from Nintendo. It’s a hybrid console, meaning it’s portable and can be used at home. How? The console comes with controllers that you can connect to your TV when playing at home and that you can attach to the portable display device when you're travelling or going somewhere else. Pretty cool, right? You will have to be patient, though. No information about the release date or the price has been revealed yet.

Buy Your Food and Concert Tickets Directly On Facebook

Source: TechCrunch

You might be already spending a lot of time on Facebook every day. Well, unfortunately, that’s not going to get better. Feeling peckish? You will now be able to order food directly from your favourite Facebook pages. Want to go out? You can now buy your movie and event tickets directly on it. But why Facebook is doing all that? Well, by reducing friction when surfing on the internet, Facebook will become even more popular with entertainment and food businesses looking for higher converting ads.

Europe vs.USA

Source: eCommerceNews

What's the common characteristic between Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple? Well, they are all American giant technology companies dominating their own industries all around the world. So could Europe compete against them? Well, Gerrit Heinemann, a European eCommerce expert believes so. According to Heinemann, Europe provides excellent conditions for the digital battle and could compete against giant etailers like Amazon. As he points out, successful vertical retailers like Ikea, Inditex, H&M, and Aldi are all from Europe. European online marketplaces continue to grow.

Drupal Founder Sets Up Acquia Labs to Research the Future of the Web

Source: VentureBeat

Dries Buytaert, Drupal founder (the open-source framework) has announced the creation of Acquia Labs, a research and development unit that will focus research on the future of the web. As the Drupal community is still growing–over 35,000 members–the possibilities to help with the research are huge. And help will definitely be needed. Indeed, Dries wants to look beyond the horizon. He recently declared that “the website is something that is less and less relevant. We want to move from consumption of content to interaction with content". Acquia Labs will develop technologies to build custom user experiences in order to offer relevant information. That sounds like a promising project doesn’t it?

Acquisition of Mozu Commerce

Source: InternetRetailer

Kibo, a software company that provides omni-channel, e-commerce platform, order management and mobile commerce services to retailers, this week announced their acquisition of cloud-based Commerce platform Mozu. The purchase price was not disclosed and is hot off the recent acquisition of another cloud-based vendor, Baynote. This acquisition will bring new features to Mozu customers, like an order management system and more mobile commerce tools. “This investment represents our commitment to empowering our customers to increase sales and improve consumer loyalty,” says Kenneth Frank, CEO of Kibo.