Near the beginning of 2010 — more than two years ago — Josh Kopelman, Managing Partner at First Round Capital, noticed something unusual.
At that time, the World Wide Web was showing signs of dramatic change. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Wikipedia — all 21st century creations — had quickly become wildly popular. But the top tier of the e-commerce space had been mostly static since 1999.
Back then, Kopelman compared two lists of websites to investigate his hypothesis: the 15 most popular websites in 1999 and 2010, and the 15 most popular e-commerce sites in those same two years, as measured by traffic monitoring site Alexa. The former pair of lists revealed roughly 50 percent turnover between 1999 and 2010, caused in part by the explosive popularity of those four aforementioned sites.
But the e-commerce list was different — that is, it looked nearly the same as it did in 1999. Amazon, eBay, Netflix, Walmart, Best Buy, Ikea and Target were still tops; Barnes and Noble, Home Depot, and The Gap are up there too.
Kopelman interpreted this lack of change as a signal that disruption was on the way. “Over 90% of the top eCommerce websites are over 12 years old!” he wrote. “That is pretty remarkable to me — and reflects an amazing lack of external innovation.”
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Fast forward to the 2012 list of most popular shopping sites. The top of the list still looks the same, but there are some interesting new entrants further down.
1. Amazon.com
2. eBay
3. Netflix
4. Walmart
5. Ikea
6. Groupon
7. Target
8. Best Buy
9. NewEgg
10. Multiply
11. Living Social
12. The Home Depot
13. Macy’s
14. Sears
15. Barnes and Noble
Source: http://www.alexa.com/topsites/category/Top/Shopping
Kudos to Kopelman for envisioning change just before it happened.
But now for the next question: will this change stick? Or is there more innovation on the way in e-commerce? Tell us what you think.
