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I would also be interested in stats on eCommerce websites for businesses which have been shuttered. Wouldn't that be interesting if you could still shop there
by NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
I would also be interested in stats on eCommerce websites for businesses which have
been shuttered. Wouldn't that be interesting if you could still shop there?
When I played an MMOG, we had a very complex economic meta game, where you could purchase shops and stalls, and you could trade, buy, sell, and manufacture goods, you could store them, and you could ship them around the world.
And players began to discover that they didn't necessarily need to micromanage, or even manage, their shops. They could set wages and prices in the spreadsheet, then toss millions of coin into the coffers, and then just let it run on auto-pilot.
And then there were players who did this, and retired from the game, or they were even banned. Their properties weren't disabled in any way, IIRC, so as long as those shops had funds to pay the rent, they could attract traders and employees, and operate with impunity, and we began to call them "zombie shops".
These zombie shops began to dominate the economy; even though the trade pricing was not optimal and they weren't being tweaked every day, they could easily absorb a lot of commerce, because there were a lot of them in the marketplace. So it was so frustrating to be an active business owner and competing against zombies!
Of course, a real-life zombie eCommerce site would be more difficult to pull off, but perhaps not impossible, given the logistics of drop-shipping and automated payment processing. Consider a personal website, whose accounts have been prepaid well in advance, with future-proofed technology; it could be the next Energizer Bunny.
Here's a Scavenger Hunt: what's the oldest extant personal website still running today? What's the oldest revision date on a website's page files? What's the oldest personal website where all functionality still remains?
- blustod 3y agoI wonder how long Let's Encrypt renewals will work on their own. Thinking of the oldest personal websites brings to mind the early web journalers around 1998 or so. I hadn't seen much of life and the world, so it was amazing to read about other people's lives. And there was controversy about whether they would get stalked. I believe everyone eventually got jobs and spouses and moved on because there wasn't a way to turn a little prominence into money. At the time, some of them talked like they were going to be famous pioneers. I suppose the entire early web is forgotten, beyond knowing that ebay and amazon and google date back to those days.
- nicbou 3y agoThis might be difficult because payment processors randomly expect work out of you. It might only happen once or twice a year, but it happens.