Guest post by Mina Hsiang. Mina is an associate with General Catalyst Partners in Cambridge and a current member of the MITX Future Leaders Group.

As I sat in the sold-out MITX e-commerce event, I couldn't help thinking to myself "This is about everything but the commerce!" No one was discussing transactions. No one was talking about how to manage payment systems.  People talked about social media, e-mail, reviews, comparisons, a volunteer marketing army!  So I looked up the word commerce, and this is the definition I found:

com•merce/ˈkämərs/
Noun:    1.  The activity of buying and selling, esp. on a large scale.
2.  Social dealings between people.
    
I immediately saw where my expectations had been wrong. In fact, I now think e-commerce is finally coming of age; it is truly becoming commerce instead of just shopping.