Curation is increasingly critical to success. Making everything available — à la Amazon and iTunes — is a game very few can, or should, play.

Gone is the age of “feature, function, selection and price.” Now, e-retail is fueled by emotional connections between sites and users.

The Web isn’t dead (as Wired Magazine proclaimed a year ago), but it has become just one of many touch points — with tablet apps moving to the fore.

Realizing the advantages of curation and emotion (served on the right device) depends critically on having in-depth knowledge of site users. As Doug Mack says, this is a strategy that only those who have built-in know-how about Big Data, Social Media, and the Cloud can exploit.

All of which begs the question: Won’t every retailer who isn’t thinking along these lines find themselves significantly threatened or, worse, simply swept aside?