I can't speak to social networks or social media tools, but I can assure you that ecommerce has a lot of difficult problems to solve. To a first approximation, it's easy to throw up a LAMP site and sell random crap. Once you get beyond this and start trying to squeeze out profits by building and executing on various optimization problems, things get significantly more complex. Companies like Amazon and Wal-Mart have invested huge amounts of money into esoteric research to optimize supply chains, fulfillment processes, inventory control, promotional returns, energy usage, expected customer value, etc, etc, ad infinitum.