The Traditional Two-Sided Marketplace is Dead

Curated marketplaces disrupt larger vertical and horizontal marketplaces by creating a community-like feeling around a given niche. Content creators also create audiences centred around their image or specific interests. And so, isn't it logical that content creators should operate their own curated marketplace? It's a match made in heaven.

The problem of filling out the buyers’ side of the marketplace is already sorted by the creator's audience.

What about the seller's side? Would brands actually like something like this? The downside is that the customer and their data would be wholly owned by the creator and so will the UX of the shopping experience.

So far, curated consumer marketplaces are tied to a brand like Zippy Pantry, Bubble or Amazon. It's a huge engineering challenge to create a central ecommerce API similar to what Carted, Fast and a few others are building out. Additionally, there needs to be an easy solution to creating a self branded marketplace. So whilst a lot of people have wri... See more

Stepping away from consumer marketplaces, this model already exists through platforms such as Pallet and Getro who are leading the way in terms of democratising the job advertising process away from traditional job marketplaces such as Seek and Linkedin.

Even so, the issue of too much choice and a lack of accurate personalisation persists within some of these businesses. How do you know which remote worker to hire on Upwork, or which company is actually worth applying for on Indeed? Herein lies the power of curation.