- published: 26 May 2014
- views: 4499
Online shopping (sometimes known as e-tail from "electronic retail" or e-shopping) is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser. Alternative names are: e-web-store, e-shop, e-store, Internet shop, web-shop, web-store, online store, online storefront and virtual store. Mobile commerce (or m-commerce) describes purchasing from an online retailer's mobile optimized online site or app.
An online shop evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services at a bricks-and-mortar retailer or shopping center; the process is called business-to-consumer (B2C) online shopping. In the case where a business buys from another business, the process is called business-to-business (B2B) online shopping. The largest of these online retailing corporations are Alibaba, Amazon.com, and eBay.
English entrepreneur Michael Aldrich invented online shopping in 1979. His system connected a modified domestic TV to a real-time transaction processing computer via a domestic telephone line. He believed that videotex, the modified domestic TV technology with a simple menu-driven human–computer interface, was a 'new, universally applicable, participative communication medium — the first since the invention of the telephone.' This enabled 'closed' corporate information systems to be opened to 'outside' correspondents not just for transaction processing but also for e-messaging and information retrieval and dissemination, later known as e-business. His definition of the new mass communications medium as 'participative' [interactive, many-to-many] was fundamentally different from the traditional definitions of mass communication and mass media and a precursor to the social networking on the Internet 25 years later.
Set in my ways
losing track of the days
Only me to live for.
Had no need to give more
Than I wanted to.
Spending my time
just holding the line
Never getting caught up.
Love was never brought up
It's not the thing to do.
It was you,
Then came you.
You made me leap without taking a look.
It was you,
Then came you.
You reeled me right in line, sinker, and hook.
Never thought forever was the best I could do.
Then came you.
It was you
Then came you.
It was you.
Me and you.
Then came you.