3C (trade association)

Last updated

3C, also styled the Connected Commerce Council, is a Washington, DC-based small business advocacy organization. It receives significant funding from large tech firms such as Google and Amazon. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

History

3C was founded in 2018 by Jake Ward to “promote small businesses’ success through the adoption of essential digital technologies and tools.” Prior to starting 3C, Ward was the co-founder and CEO of Application Developers Alliance, an advocacy organization for software developers. Ward also serves as the CEO of Data Protocol, a developer education platform. 3C raised about $1.6 million in 2018. In addition to current support from Google and Amazon, 3C has also received funding from Facebook, now known as Meta. 3C has purchased large numbers of ads on Facebook for several years. [1] [3] [4] [5]

According to its website, 3C’s mission is to “[advance] the interests, education and engagement of small businesses powered by digital technology.” 3C provides training services, connects members with resources, and advocates on behalf of its members and the small business community at large on the state, federal, and international level. As of December 2021, 3C represents 15,000 small businesses in the U.S. and Europe. 3C does not charge its members for services or information. [6]

3C has received criticism from the Campaign for Accountability, which called the organization a “front group for the nation’s largest technology companies.” 3C's technology partners include Amazon and Google. [2]

Research

3C has released several studies in partnership with Google and other partners, including:

Advocacy

3C works on various policy issues, including privacy, trade, data and advertising restrictions, competition, and digital security. [3] [4] [10]

In May 2020, 3C and 80 Kentucky small business owners presented Governor Andy Beshear and other state policymakers with a letter calling to preserve access to essential digital tools. The letter cited excessive regulation of digital platforms as a threat to small businesses. [3]

In June 2020, 3C published another letter to Colorado Governor Jared Polis, signed by 150 Colorado small business owners, stressing the importance of protecting access to digital tools. 3C has organized similar efforts to the governors of Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Utah. [8] [11] [12]

In 2021, 3C spoke out against S. 2992, H.R. 3816, and H.R. 3825, stating that antitrust legislation against tech companies would result in “collateral damage” in the way of affordable digital tools utilized by small businesses. [13]

COVID-19

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, 3C provided free training and educational resources to small businesses. 3C also launched a series of policy seminars and a funding tool to help small businesses locate funds such as PPP loans at the local, state, and federal level. [14] [4]

Education

3C partners with various organizations to provide training to members and the small business community at large. Ongoing educational offerings include training with tech partners, including the “Grow with Google series,” and 3C University, 3C's proprietary online training platform for small businesses. [1] [15]

Related Research Articles

E-commerce is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. E-commerce is in turn driven by the technological advances of the semiconductor industry, and is the largest sector of the electronics industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LinkedIn</span> Professional network website

LinkedIn is a business and employment-focused social media platform that works through websites and mobile apps. It launched on May 5, 2003. It is now owned by Microsoft. The platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows jobseekers to post their CVs and employers to post jobs. From 2015 most of the company's revenue came from selling access to information about its members to recruiters and sales professionals. Since December 2016, it has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. As of March 2023, LinkedIn has more than 900 million registered members from over 200 countries and territories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intuit</span> American financial software company

Intuit Inc. is an American business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparation application TurboTax, personal finance app Mint, the small business accounting program QuickBooks, the credit monitoring service Credit Karma, and email marketing platform Mailchimp. As of 2019, more than 95% of its revenues and earnings come from its activities within the United States.

The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a non-profit journalism school and research organization in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. The school is the owner of the Tampa Bay Times newspaper and the International Fact-Checking Network. It also operates PolitiFact.

Criticism of Google includes concern for tax avoidance, misuse and manipulation of search results, its use of others' intellectual property, concerns that its compilation of data may violate people's privacy and collaboration with the US military on Google Earth to spy on users, censorship of search results and content, and the energy consumption of its servers as well as concerns over traditional business issues such as monopoly, restraint of trade, antitrust, patent infringement, indexing and presenting false information and propaganda in search results, and being an "Ideological Echo Chamber".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wix.com</span> Israeli software company

Wix.com Ltd. is an Israeli software company, publicly listed in the US, that provides cloud-based web development services. It allows users to create HTML5 websites and mobile sites through the use of online drag and drop tools. Along with its headquarters and other offices in Israel, Wix also has offices in Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Lithuania, Poland, the Netherlands, the United States, Ukraine, and Singapore.

Shopify Inc. is a Canadian multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. Shopify is the name of its proprietary e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. The Shopify platform offers online retailers a suite of services including payments, marketing, shipping and customer engagement tools.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Common Sense Media</span> American nonprofit organization

Common Sense Media (CSM) is an organization that reviews and provides ratings for media and technology with the goal of providing information on their suitability for children. It also funds research on the role of media in the lives of children and advocates publicly for child-friendly policies and laws regarding media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Payoneer</span> Financial services company

Payoneer Global Inc. is an American financial services company that provides online money transfer, digital payment services and provides customers with working capital.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim Steyer</span> American childrens advocate and attorney

James Pearson Steyer is an American children's advocate, civil rights attorney, professor and author. He founded Common Sense Media, an organization that "provides education and advocacy to families to promote safe technology and media for children."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Optimizely</span>

Optimizely is an American company that provides digital experience platform software as a service. Optimizely provides A/B testing and multivariate testing tools, website personalization, and feature toggle capabilities, as well as web content management and digital commerce.

Pluralsight, LLC is an American privately held online education company that offers a variety of video training courses for software developers, IT administrators, and creative professionals through its website. Founded in 2004 by Aaron Skonnard, Keith Brown, Fritz Onion, and Bill Williams, the company has its headquarters in Farmington, Utah. As of July 2018, it uses more than 1,400 subject-matter experts as authors, and offers more than 7,000 courses in its catalog. Since first moving its courses online in 2007, the company has expanded, developing a full enterprise platform, and adding skills assessment modules.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Big Tech</span> Group of technology companies

Big Tech, also known as the Tech Giants, refers to the most dominant companies in the information technology industry, notably the five largest American tech companies: Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook), and Microsoft. These companies are referred to as the Big Five.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lina Khan</span> American legal scholar (b. 1989)

Lina M. Khan is a British-born American legal scholar serving as chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission since 2021. While a student at Yale Law School, she became known for her work in antitrust and competition law in the United States after publishing the influential essay "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox". She was nominated by President Joe Biden to the Commission in March 2021, and has served since June 2021 following her confirmation. She is also an associate professor of law at Columbia Law School.

Swiggy is an Indian online food ordering and delivery platform. Founded in 2014, Swiggy is based in Bangalore and operates in 500 Indian cities as of September 2021. Besides food delivery, Swiggy also provides on-demand grocery deliveries under the name Instamart, and a same-day package delivery service called Swiggy Genie.

Figma is a collaborative web application for interface design, with additional offline features enabled by desktop applications for macOS and Windows. The feature set of Figma focuses on user interface and user experience design, with an emphasis on real-time collaboration, utilising a variety of vector graphics editor and prototyping tools. The Figma mobile app for Android and iOS allows viewing and interacting with Figma prototypes in real-time on mobile and tablet devices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital Markets Act</span> European Union regulation on digital platforms

Regulation (EU) 2022/1925, commonly referred to as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), is an EU regulation that aims to make the digital economy fairer and more contestable. The regulation proposed by the European Commission in December 2020 was signed into law by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU in September 2022. It entered into force on 1 November 2022 and will become applicable, for the most part, on 2 May 2023. After this, the gatekeepers will be identified and they will have to comply by 6 March 2024 at the latest.

Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) is a type of web tracking. It groups people into "cohorts" based on their browsing history for the purpose of interest-based advertising. FLoC was being developed as a part of Google's Privacy Sandbox initiative, which includes several other advertising-related technologies with bird-themed names. Despite "federated learning" in the name, FLoC does not utilize any federated learning.

The Improving Web Advertising Business Group (IWABG) is a subcommittee of the World Wide Web Consortium with a focus on online advertising. In January 2020, Google encouraged advertising technology companies to join the group as a way to participate in the company's Privacy Sandbox initiative. The IWABG was formed in 2017; as of March 2022 it had 412 participants.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Birnbaum, Emily (30 March 2022). "Group backed by tech giants claims thousands of members. Many have never heard of it". Politico. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  2. 1 2 Krishan, Nihal (31 March 2022). "Smaller tech firms advocate bipartisan antitrust bills by bashing Big Tech". Washington Examiner. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Connected Commerce Council". Bloomberg. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  4. 1 2 3 Clifford-Cruz, Rebecca (6 July 2020). "Appreciation for small businesses drives entrepreneur's mission in a world of "forced digitization"". Las Vegas Sun. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  5. ↑ "Trustbusting Comes to Washington". National Review. 23 June 2021.
  6. ↑ "Connected Commerce Council urges policymakers to preserve access to digital tools, small business needs". Lane Report. 26 May 2020. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  7. ↑ Price, Lisa (1 April 2021). "Small Businesses Urge Government to Promote Access to Digital Tools". Small Business Trends.
  8. 1 2 Lee, Jason (8 May 2020). "Study shows small businesses surviving thanks to digital access". Deseret News.
  9. ↑ Ajamy, David (7 June 2020). "For small businesses during pandemic, digital tools equal better success". Dallas Business Journal. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  10. ↑ Lovelace, Ryan (7 June 2020). "For small businesses during pandemic, digital tools equal better success". Dallas Business Journal. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  11. ↑ Williams, David (6 June 2020). "Polis asked by small business to support Big Tech during COVID-19 crisis". Real Vail. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  12. ↑ "Business group urges Sisolak to continue digital support". Pahrump Valley Times. 17 June 2020. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  13. ↑ McGill, Margaret (19 November 2021). "Small business holds key to tech's antitrust fate". Axios. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  14. ↑ Mobilian, Julianne (28 March 2020). "Connected Commerce Council launches Coronavirus Resource Center to aid small businesses". Nursery Management. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  15. ↑ Bouchot, Marian (14 September 2021). "Google hosts online workshop for small businesses in valley". KESQ. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.