The week that has passed contained previews of the future. Facebook and Walmart are to strengthen their relationship and Amazon will be starting to face user revolt over sales tax collection. Amazon will be doing the right thing with regards to taxing but how it affects their bottom-line is another story. It is pretty clear that Walmart feels the need to partner with digital companies to try and shorten the distance between themselves and Amazon.

There is one post that I read this week that I have gone back to a couple of times. Fred Wilson has been writing about mobile a lot more recently and his post over Mobile commerce highlighted one of the newer channels that commerce needs to be thinking about. Mobile is here to stay, the execution is what will determine who wins and become successful. It provides more touch points for retailers to connect with their users.

Obviously the biggest story of the week has to be Marissa Mayer being named the new CEO of Yahoo!. Personally, I want Yahoo! to become more relevant because dear citizens of the Internet we have one search engine making all the rules. Commerce is something severally lacking from Yahoo’s stable (Yahoo! Shopping is powered by PriceGrabber) and maybe something that Mayer needs to have a look at. Merchants are going to look for an alternative as soon as paid Google Shopping is rolled out. I sense acquisitions in a variety of areas.

The top 10 ecommerce stories for me was:

1. Will Amazon Take Over the World? Has Amazon put a target on retailers back? I am still undecided as without physical presence, users still need to get online and then buy their items. Amazon Prime counters that but small retailers are definitely in between a rock and a hard place.

2. The Democratization Of Fashion Commerce: Big Niches Are Emerging For Startups – Fashion is arguably one of the most competitive ecommerce verticals at the moment. “The web is empowering a new generation of fashion makers with lower manufacturing and distribution barriers while cutting out the fat in the value chain.” – It is a fascinating post that anyone associated with ecommerce should read.

3. Lyst’s Secret to Social Commerce Sales: Content + Commerce Curation I believe strongly that commerce and content curation goes hand in hand.  Being able to create your feed “lyst” leads to content being discovered, shared and an alert can be sent to the user.  We live in a world where content is overflowing and focus/curation is the new key differentiator. Being able to create your own unique experience is what made Flipboard so successful.

4. Are You Reading This, Amazon? Fab.com’s Secret Retail Sauce – Fab is quickly becoming a company that is creating a value proposition that contains a barrier to entry for competitors. I love how they operate, their users are what determines how they act. When last did you get a company asking you to check your email preferences? The founders do something which I think is something we all can learn from. The communicate to their users. Every couple of months they send an email with something interesting in it. No marketing, just pure communication to ensure every user has a clear idea of milestones etc.

5. Rakuten, Japan’s Amazon, steals a march on its nemesis – It is pretty clear that the big local ecommerce players are in defense mode with regard to Amazon.com. “Japan, the world’s second-biggest publishing market, is a pivotal move. Rakuten has reached a saturation point in Japan and needs to find new products to sell.” In Japan, Rakuten is the market leader and they rushed to ensure that their acquisition (Kobo) gets the first bite with ebooks in Japan. The Kindle is to be released in Japan in the coming months.

6. Indonesia is hot! Japanese games giants GREE and Sony’s So-net invest in e-commerce startup PriceArea – South East Asia is at the moment getting a lot of attention from global companies looking for investment. PriceArea – a comparison shopping engine received funding from Japanese powerhouses GREE and Sony. What is particularly interesting is whether GREE, a gaming behemoth is contemplating adding commerce and retail to their offering.. (The successful ecommerce businesses have a value chain / ecosystem to ensure that they control as much of the customer journey as possible).

7. LivingSocial’s new Shop site takes on Groupon’s Goods, doesn’t impress. Is group buying a falling star? The mere fact that Groupon and LivingSocial both are adding additional categories to their offering tells me that we are in the early downward movement of group buying. It also raises questions on how sustainable the businesses are..

8. Macy’s Using Shopkick Mobile Rewards App Nationwide – Shopkick is an interesting play. The mere fact that Macy’s is rolling it out nationwide leads me to believe that more retailers will join Shopkick. Footfall is a huge problem for all retailers, Shopkick provides a way to get users in store and reward them.

9. Ebay Beats Forecasts On Strong Growth From Marketplaces, Q2 Revenue Up 23 Percent To $3.4B – “We delivered a great second quarter, driven by eBay Marketplaces’ best performance in years, strong growth at PayPal and strong same-store-sales growth for GSI’s large retail customers,” said eBay President and CEO John Donahoe.” eBay had a very solid Q2 result presentation in comparison to Microsoft and Nokia. The interesting thing to note is how important mobile has become for eBay.

10. In Warehouses, Kiva’s Robots Do the Heavy Lifting – The ultimate challenge is to build a robot that can do all the picking, packing, and shipping. But variations in the size and shape of merchandise, and its position on shelves, make this an extremely difficult task to automate. For now, at least, human workers will keep that job. That sounds like it is a matter of time before Kiva robots and other robots have total control in the warehouses of ecommerce businesses. Kiva was a great acquisition by Amazon but did Labour Unions contribute to this solution?

Bonus link: Marissa Mayer Named Yahoo CEO (July 2012): Why did Marissa Mayer accept the CEO position at Yahoo? Mark Rogowsky provides a Quora answer that contains analysis on one of the biggest shock appointments in technology in a very long time. I simply have one question – What do all the naysayers say when Mayer turns Yahoo! around?