Hub.eu.com is a radically new on-line community that features a secure and easy to set up online store, combined with a revolutionary 3D commercial space in Second Life, an ever expanding community of 14,524,679 users who conduct over 19,356,136 financial transactions a month.
It could be argued that modern eCommerce was born in April 1993 when the University of Minnesota announced that it would be charging license fees for its implementation of the Gopher protocol, a then-popular means of browsing the internet. By 1996 most publicly traded companies were in agreement that an internet presence was no longer optional and eCommerce entered the main stream. It culminated with a "dot-com" boom of 1999-2001, which historically can be seen similar to other technology-inspired booms of the past including railroads in the 1840s, radio in the 1920s, transistor electronics in the 1950s.
Since 2002 eCommerce techniques have been developing hand in hand with the rest of the World Wide Web, and has branched out into the do-it-yourself field (eg: Ebay) and the social networking sites (eg: Facebook). However, the principle concept of an eCommerce business has remained unchanged: access a website, go through a catalogue, select a product! It is a 2 dimensional process lacking human interaction .... until now!
Enter hub.eu.com! The site brings eCommerce to whole new level by adding not only a 3rd dimension to the entire shopping experience but also by providing an unprecedented degree of interaction between a business and its customers! Like many of the already familiar social networking sites, The Hub is built around an idea of creating a community with common interests and goals. A community which fosters a learning environment as well as a place for mentoring and collaboration between businesses, retailers, artists and musicians. A community with a secure and fully functioning shop feature which is easy to set up, access and maintain, where you, the user, have full control over the content, design and features of your own uniquely created retail space.
The idea for the project was born late one evening in a conversation between friends who all came from very different backgrounds (artists, musicians, IT, retail) but where united by a common goal: to find a way of sharing their ideas and promoting their individual work while still being able to support themselves financially as a result of it. Second Life was suggested as one of the ways to achieve this. However, at that time it wasn't taken seriously and simply put aside for later. It wasn't until we seriously looked at creating a commercial website to sell our collective work that we started considering its benefits.
After a detailed examination of Second Life it became apparent that it was a young, vibrant and open minded community, accustomed to new and unorthodox solutions! It also provided us with a 3D modelling environment and a built-in real-time voice communication between users. (Of course, if you didn't have a mic then you could still send messages to each other.) Most importantly, visitors to the same area (eg: your shop) could see and speak with each other. This allowed for an unprecedented degree of interaction between the client and the customer, which otherwise is only available in a real life store. The next step in the evolution of The Hub was to merge our website with Second Life.
The result was most surprising! Once the site was established, we discovered a strong interest in the project from a number of other, unrelated sources. Most queries were from small businesses, individual retailers and other artists and musicians who wanted to use The Hub to promote and sell their products in a similar fashion. As a result, the site has been redesigned and reworked to better suit the needs of our community. Finally, after many month of working, tinkering and perfecting all of the features, hub.eu.com was re-launched as an accessible, friendly and viable retail community portal over the Christmas & New Year holidays of 2009.
