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Comment by ChuckNorris89 | Hacker News Reader

To play the devil's advocate, most small business in my area of Europe(bars, cafes, bands, jazz/rock halls, shops, restaurants and even dentists) rely on Facebook for reaching out to their customers or audience, organizing and advertising events and even for customer support via Facebook Messenger to the point where their Facebook page has replaced their main website as it's more alive since it's easier for their staff to use and keep up to date vs a dedicated website.

If I would give up my Facebook account, I would miss out on a lot of events that happend in town(pre covid).

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Maybe it’s because Facebook has killed anyone’s desire to check out a website, penalizing those that don’t have an entry on the platform?

Many people prefer looking at the companies Facebook page, rather than the website. Sometimes, websites are designed poorly and can confuse the visitor. Meanwhile, the Facebook page shows customer ratings, posts, comments, reactions, and other useful information.

I know that even some people calls to their ISP complaining that "internet is down".

When ISP support trying to figure what's going on they found that actually Facebook as service is down.

But people think that Facebook IS The Internet.

That just seems like an opportunity for competition in the space of website builders for small business.

But people already know Facebook and know the concepts (pages, comments, posts, users, profile pics, groups), so there's much less friction.

To many people, "making a website" sounds like a big complicated scary thing that only big serious players do.

Yes, which is a situation begging for new entrants to make that scary thing easy.

The kebab shop around the corner won't think about "making a website", they won't try to find out whether it's easy or not. But they are personally on Fb, so they will easily click "create page" and fill in their opening hours and upload a smartphone photo of their menu card and their store front.

It's extremely frictionless, and easy to start tiny.

Nobody is arguing with you about why people use Facebook.

The point is only that there is no fundamental reason this facility needs to be part of Facebook.

Most of those business dont need a website. They only need one place ( cough centralised cough ) where their customer can easily find them, have all the relevant information, ( Email, Tele, Opening Time etc ), and a small space for newest update. Which could be special menu once in a while. And that is it. It is the same thing as most business dont need an App.

And on the last point, you dont need a Facebook account to access those information. ( Although the UX pretty much sucks )

Apart from its "presumed" political problem, which dare I say I am increasingly leaning towards it has nothing to do with Facebook, I think Facebook on a whole is net positive. Especially outside America.

> They only need one place ( cough centralised cough ) where their customer can easily find them, have all the relevant information, ( Email, Tele, Opening Time etc ), and a small space for newest update.

Google also offer this service, which lets small businesses display opening times and updates so that searchers get up to date info. I’d argue this is more useful as it lets new customers find you, as opposed to your existing followers on Facebook. In any case most business have to now update this info on multiple places.

But re “don’t need a website” — you can get one for less than €50/year, and you get a @yourbusiness.domain + email as well.

If this is too much for you, you’re not a serious player. In fact, a business running on a @gmail or @yahoo address, with the online presence being on Facebook screams “amateur” or even possibly “scammer”. In any case it’s a useful signal that the owner isn’t really committed.

>If this is too much for you, you’re not a serious player. In fact, a business running on a @gmail or @yahoo address, with the online presence being on Facebook screams “amateur” or even possibly “scammer”. In any case it’s a useful signal that the owner isn’t really committed.

This is very much in the context of US. The total Facebook user outside of US exceed the total population of US itself. And most of those business, especially in SEA are simply using amateur email address just to get things done or in some cases, dont even have Email at all as they rely on WhatsApp / Line or just Facebook Messenger.

Just trying to add a Global perspective.

SE Asia and China are a different animal altogether. Privacy laws there are much looser, but this is offset by much stricter government control and much less recourse by companies like WeChat to the courts. Hint: if WeChat doesn't toe the PRC government line, it will run into... problems.

Suffice to say that Asia, and particularly China, has a different approach to governance, privacy, and (broadly) the welfare of their citizens.

However, given the enormous rights corporations enjoy in the West independent of the government, it's important that we don't use SE Asia or China as a model, and ensure that proprietary platforms don't have too much power over small businesses. Luckily, most small businesses in the West know this already, otherwise AOL would still be doing gangbusters business.

PS. Something that's often missed about small businesses in Asia doing business solely on WeChat is that informal trust networks forged by 'contacts', are a huge thing in Asia. It doesn't matter if the seller of really cheap phone covers just has a WeChat ID if a respected merchant vouches for him. And platforms like Alibaba and Taobao exist for people who reach the limits of these informal networks and want to go to the next level.

> Most of those business dont need a website. They only need one place ( cough centralised cough ) where their customer can easily find them, have all the relevant information, ( Email, Tele, Opening Time etc ), and a small space for newest update. Which could be special menu once in a while. And that is it. It is the same thing as most business dont need an App.

I feel like what you described is just a website. The "one place" to find businesses is your local search engine. Sure, a website isn't free, but if your business makes any amount of money whatsoever, the costs of hosting and maintenance will be a rounding error.

I could be overestimating people's willingness to leave the Facebook walled-garden, but to be fair, I've never used Facebook proper to find more information on products or businesses.

Websites can be free. Wix and Webflow will let you create and host one at no cost if you're OK with a subdomain of the vendor.

The cost and effort of moving that subdomain to a self branded domain is relatively cheap as well

Besides that, Google My Business also lets you create a barebones site, which is especially useful as it's integrated with Maps and shows open/close hours, manage reviews and feedback. Bing Places does this as well.

> The "one place" to find businesses is your local search engine

What businesses want is to show you these things without your explicit desire to find them, which isn't the "one place" a search engine needs to be.

It's obvious that people like having access to a service like Facebook. This does not mean that Facebook has to systematically extract every shred of user data across the Internet and sell it to the highest bidder. We can very easily have one without the other.

RIGHT! Facebook has made it OUR problem that THEIR business model is based on selling ads. But it shouldn't be our problem.

I realise this is a devil’s advocate type argument, but I doubt Facebook is the only channel for most small businesses, and even if it was, it’s their fault for relying on a single channel and taking no precautions. Not even a website?

FWIW I know several small business owners (in Europe - well, in the UK) who use Google’s tools for business, Facebook, Twitter — most popular social media accounts, in fact. In addition to that they have a website, distribute flyers, publicise themselves with local newspapers/bloggers, and have “recommend a friend” programmes.

But are they using Facebook Ads for this or simply using a page/group? Nobody's trying to ban FB pages and groups, it's the insitious tracking and data sharing.

This is very different from the slimy tactics around our privacy and data.

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