eCommerce Use Case for Open Data

I have been affiliated with eCommerce industry for 10+ years and have been part of development of datafeeds/rss for exchanging data for several companies including Amazon and now for our current eCommerce venture, Shimply.

There are two major problems that Open Data can solve –

1) Availability of correct and relevant information to consumer globally

2) Reduction in man hours/bandwidth consumption across the industry in maintaining a clean database with relevant information

Whether it’s publishers who want to distribute their books or, any brand that want to sell their products, they all try their best to provide accurate and complete information to their direct point of contacts. However, due to lack of will/technical aptitude/laziness, that information is lost on the way to various consumer facing sites.

Openlibrary is an initiative in this regard but seems like it has been discontinued. There are many other incarnations in at least books space but there are very few in other domains. Seems like even public databases of UPC codes don’t have complete information on the product itself.

I will like to request other members of the group to pitch in with their ideas/if this matches their area of interest. I am more than willing to contribute data (17.5 million products information)/engg effort to make this a reality.

Let me know.