My guess is that they will try to integrate Shopify sites into the platform, to give the FB Shops platform some momentum, then gradually push the non FBS stores down the page. My reasoning is that they are emulating Google.
Alternatively, they could be looking to make FB Shops an advertising platform, similar to Amazon Seller Central, where they don't care who you buy from, but they want each seller to pay for ads and/or payment processing.
Although being a simple shopify drop in replacement would have its advantages in simplicity, there is probably more long term potential if they embrace multi-channel sales, and become a storefront management tool ala https://www.ecomdash.com/ and https://www.shipstation.com/ Some people are going to keep shopping on amazon, some on ebay, some on walmart, some on etsy, some directly on websites.
Im not saying that's what they are doing, but its a way to skim off all transactions instead of trying to force business into facebook.
Probably the right answer. If you have a shop that's getting some sales on etsy, amazon or ebay or wherever else you're not going to want to close it down in favor of facebook – you'll just open a second storefront there.
Your guess appears to be wrong. I couldn't find anything about FB Shops using Shopify platform. Only that you can stock your store from the Shopify store.. which is a tool that Shopify provides. In other words, Shopify is using the FB Merchant and Store APIs. Like anyone can.
It seems like a bad deal for Shopify sellers. They must pay FB 5% and Shopify 2% of each transaction. If they jettisoned Shopify, they'd just pay FB 5%.
Depends how serious FB wants to invest in building out their own e-commerce backend platform. Not sure it is that valuable to them when IG is the more differentiating part of the product.
For a lot of stores, Shopify is just an API for your store. There's a big trend in ecommerce of going "headless" and using Shopify's API to push your products out to many channels. In that sense, Shopify is merely a special database (similar to Salesforce) to track your customers, orders, products, inventory, discounts, etc which is then pushed out to channels like Facebook Shop or Amazon.
I don't get it. If you buy something from Facebook Shop does Facebook take a fee or Shopify for example. I'm guessing Facebook is trying to get rid off websites and essentially Google and hoping all discovery happens on Facebook and Instagram.
I'm wondering how Facebook Shops is going to impact Shopify,Amazon and Google Shopping in the long term.
I read the tweet from Shopify CEO and I thought Facebook went and partnered with Shopify only. Turns out that is not true.
Anyway out of all those listed, I would think Shopify has the biggest to gain. While I dont know enough about the possibility of Facebook doing Triple E, at least All of a sudden Shopify's insane valuation makes a little more sense and justifying the possible potential. Currently market cap at ˜90B and trading at ˜50x revenue.
They are allowing Shopify merchants to publish their inventories to the FB store. In exchange Shopify wants 2% of every transaction and 30 bucks a month or 9 bucks for their "lite" version.
Or you can just use FB directly to stock your store & pay Shopify zilch.
It's a really interesting question. My gut tells me that Shopify is looking for a suitor and this is facebook's way of de-risking (validating?) a potential investment.
Shopify is definitely not looking for a suitor - no way. They still have so much growth potential - that rocketship is looking to add more channels. Once on Shopify it's tough to leave - that whole switching cost.
A lot of Shopify's competitive advantage comes from being a giant, Canadian tech company. Similar to Blackberry before it, the government is extremely generous and investors price the stock accordingly. If Shopify moved to the States or was acquired by an American company I think it would take away that unique appeal.
Also the founder is an egomaniac and would never sell.
Out of curiosity, has doing this disrupted your web browsing experience in any way? I'd like to do this but I'm kind of afraid of alienating 75% of the web that relies on the FB JS SDK for something (I'm not really sure if this is the case, but it might be?)
EDIT: thanks for the responses. Will block at DNS :)
The only problems I could see is that some services that ONLY auth via Facebook will not work.
Having stated that, consider if you eliminate Facebook from your life and have issues on the web, and the answer to those issues is not "create a Facebook account" then it should be relatively safe to remove Facebook from your life.
By "disrupt", do you mean "improves immensely"? It depends on how much FOMO you suffer from. For instance, the folks that I used to do music jams with (picture middle-aged folk playing bluegrass) have moved to FB Live(?) for some things. I don't see those, nor participate. That's okay, we do our own non-proprietary chat once a week in lieu of live jammin'. Local animal shelter posts stuff on FB, most of which I can live without.
Does shit break because something, something FB SDK? Nope, at least not shit I care about, and not FB.
But for the most part, I get to mostly forget that FB even exists.
Indeed. What's the point of having values if you're not willing to be burdened with some costs?
Since FB lacks strong values it gets imposed on the wider community, but such is life. The only true option is using or building alternatives. Trying to chain the monster, where every individual positive attributes always has to be controlled and directed from some other central body, whom we then also have to trust with even more power, sounds like a losing game to me.
Not using FB isn't that difficult anyway. There's plenty of group messaging apps that achieve much of the same.
Are you replying to me, or just hijacking to make a general point? Because FB gets blocked at DNS at my house, I could have saved you some typing on "values".
One friend of mine was visiting and noticed the same thing on my wifi. We got into debate where he argued to be freedom loving individual and I being in support of censorship. Now okay, I backed down with my "censorship" but unfortunately to quote RMS it ended up being "negative in the freedom dimension". Kinda regret it now that I was kind enough to give wifi access.
You could remove the DNS block and only block it from loading from 3rd party sites using the built-in Firefox support or a suitable WebExtension (and also block it in non-browser apps if desired by setting up a MITM proxy with a certificate only trusted by the browser and user agent filtering).
Why have 2 different shops on Facebook and Instagram, it will lead to more confusion. Also what about for folks who don't use either of those services?
Plenty of brands were already doing lead-gen to their products through Instagram, whether through ads, or just by creating a photo/video of their product that started trending (in a way similar to how you'd expect a pretty craftwork to trend on Pinterest.) I think Instagram even already has the inline "purchase the thing this is a picture of" flow—though right now it's just in the form of a modal webview to the partner's shop product page for the relevant item.
The "Instagram Shop" part of the offering they're describing, sounds less like an independent system, and more like a way for independent creators to get the same benefits as those large partners, where they can take a picture of the fancy sweater they made, have it appear on trending, and then there can be a "Buy" button right there on the post everyone's sharing. It's an Instagram integration for the Facebook Shop system.
I also don't think there's going to be a separate "Instagram Shop" landing page for a given account, per se; if there is an index view, it'll just be a collection of the buyable items posted by a given Instagram account. The expectation, though, would be that "buyable" posts would just be part of a brand page's regular feed of posts. The "buy button" is just an enhancement to what the account was already doing, rather than a whole separate storefront to set up.
I'm guessing, in the end, what you'd really be purchasing via the Instagram hosted inline purchase flow, is a Facebook Shop product SKU. You'd probably get an email from Facebook Shopping about your product, etc. In other words, "Facebook Shop" would be a payment processor / hosted commerce backend, that happens to have a flagship front-end UX; and Instagram would be an alternative front-end UX.
> Also what about for folks who don't use either of those services?
Given the way they seem to be building it, there's definitely some backend core with an API that looks a lot like Shopify's API. I'm guessing they'll offer third-party developer access to that API.
As far I've seen from the video you can mirror you Facebook Shop on both Facebook and Instagram meaning they will look and feel the same.
"Also what about for folks who don't use either of those services?" Then obviously you won't use Facebook Shop, you can use Amazon or any other ecommerce service.
It's interesting how people here are happy to criticise "chyna" when facebook is really the same thing with a corporate logo and a backdoor. The difference is china has a frontdoor. Facebook also runs in your phone with spyware.
Let's just say you are correct, framing and all. So the two options in your scenario are collecting data without consent. The difference then becomes feeding information to a US corporation, which benefits 25,000+ US citizens through direct employment, benefits the countless stock portfolios that hold facebook stock, and benefits the US tech business as a whole, or a brutalist authoritarian regime, hostile to US interests that murders it's own citizens.
Both are wrong and need correction, but I'll take facebook's "spyware" any day.
This thread seems mostly negative towards Facebook (good - fuck em') but your comment seems to suggest you think there's some bias here. Are people on HN being too positive about Facebook?
Maybe its just me but I have noticed a sharp rise in anti-china rhetoric here. For example there is a dead comment below which cites America is not a totalitarian regime that hurts its citizens, which is not true because you have Native Americans and racism in America which affects plenty of minorities.
As a programmer one of our tasks is to build abstractions and simplifications. To me it looks like facebook has a near monopoly on a social network that collects and sells data and China has one big social network, that has everyone on it. From a strictly interface perspective both are the same. Both have backdoors.
What I find troubling is that people seem to accept Facebook as a hero when you could as well make the case the china is more heroic for its people. It was china the pulled a majority of people out of poverty not U.S.A which has a lot of homeless people.
Capitalism with monopolies that sleep with the government is not that different from chinese style capitalism, which on paper has to serve the people.
The biggest problem with capitalism is the "legal person" definition and limited liability exception. Offshoring is also a shit idea clearly.
Talking about china is relevant for hackers because probably china might be more sincere about open source than microsoft with its profit motive. Anti-china rhetoric will just ruin such discussions rather than allow people to get balanced perspectives.
America isn't a totalitarian regime though. Evidence of racism isn't relevant for that definition - it's a label that applies based on government structure.
Totalitarian to who ... that's the question. America is fairly totalitarian to Mexicans, Native Indians to a very huge degree and to black people on a minor degree. In the same vein China is totalitarian to people who are not Han-Chinese. A majority of the Chinese live perfectly reasonable and modern lives.
You don't get a "free political speech" pass even if you identify/pass as Han Chinese. Certainly you don't get treated as badly, but the restrictions on speech are still real.
According to the Nazis they were a National Socialists, they did not see themselves as totalitarian. I suppose it is an illusion of reference. People inside U.S.A think it is a free nation ... whereas those on the outside can see its totalitarian tendencies more clearly.
To take the case of France, what is it doing in Guiana ? France may be liberal to its people but it suppresses people in Guiana in a totalitarian way.
The main source of revenue for FB is advertising. They are able to offer Facebook Shops at a loss to get the market share. Many small businesses are mainly present online as a shop on a platform and a FB page. This is bad news for Etsy.
Maybe effective? Smart implies a bit too much imo. For a while now, users have been using pages to promote their businesses and using FB pay for transactions. It seems this was inevitable, and I'm more surprising how long it took than how "really smart" it is.
That makes a lot of sense. Does raise the stakes quite a bit too, which makes the decision maybe a little bit difficult. So the engineers who make the thing happen are for sure smart. And the researchers who prove it should be profitable are also pretty smart. But the idea itself -- trying to take over some other market that they already have a foothold in -- is pretty obvious.
Why would it? They can do controlled rollouts if they want. Core design has to scale, but I seriously doubt they'd be planning for millions/QPS right out the gate.
I don’t use Facebook, but bragging about that and questioning whether anybody else still uses Facebook feels a lot like asking if anybody still buys Apple phones.
I vaguely recall a HN comment on a different subject which drew a parallel to the famous Yogi Berra quip, “Nobody goes there anymore, too crowded.” It sounds like one of his classic oxymorons, but there is a deeper implication with respect to tastemakers/early adopters/elite users who flee anything once it has its “Eternal September.”
Yes, it’s too crowded, but what we’re really saying with a line like that is, “Too crowded with the wrong kind of people.”
But for me, Facebook is crowded with plenty of the right kind of people. Lots of my climbing tribe coördinate trips on FB, and I miss out on that. There are multiple Volvo enthusiast groups on FB, and I miss out on get-togethers if nobody remembers to text me.
So, scarface74, I’m with you on the importance of being self-aware about the fact that while we may not use a thing for ethical reasons, or because it no longer adds value to our lives, but nevertheless it is still crowded with people who have perfectly valid reasons for liking it.
I no longer use facebook as well and I know a lot of people in my age group not using it. But having said that, a lot of people, specially older people still do and they have valid reasons for it. May be shops will be targeted towards them.
I don't trust Facebook, but I use it. I don't spend money on Facebook. I don't intend to have a financial relationship with Facebook. There certainly are some benefits of using Facebook for certain purposes.
> I don't intend to have a financial relationship with Facebook.
You wish it was that way but you do have one. An increasing number of businesses submit their financial data to Facebook and Facebook uses that data to track your offline activities. Few months ago they made some of this info available to you.
First subtract China where it isn't available and you're down to a possible market of 6.35 Billion. But then start subtracting the number of children in the world, the number too poor to spend any money on anything FB would be selling or advertising and random other places where it might be blocked.
That’s a lot of words to say “the majority of Facebook users are using Facebook”.
That you just ignore the country with the largest population because Facebook doesn’t operate there is a big tell.
Also, why would you assume the kind of products people might sell and thus their pricing? I’ve seen (and bought!) stuff online for ~ 11THB. 35 US cents.
You can say a lot of people use Facebook and that’s fine. But if you’re going to say “the majority of people” you really need to define which people you’re talking about.
No business cares about trying to reach people who don't have money to spend on their products. It's kind of common sense that FB isn't trying to reach 5 years old. Also, it's kind of common sense that Facebook doesn't have many people in China where it's banned. Out of the FAANGM's, the only one that competes with Facebook is Google and they aren't in China either.
But to be even more blunt. FB no more cares about people spending 35 cents online than Apple cares about people who only want to/can buy a phone that cost $100.
Facebook is like LinkedIn. Everyone has an account, but not everyone cares about theirs.
You keep your Facebook account for the rare occasion that it’s useful. I logged into mine to keep up with old friends during covid, rather than waiting for reunions to find out if someone died.
The irony. And these are the same people that conveniently don't realise their paychecks are enabled, at least in some small way, by Facebook. It's not everyone, but it's most.
It also will blur the line between sponsored reviews and sales. So imagine when you watch a review for something on YouTube, or see someone share a product on Insta, you just straight up buy that item/service from their page. You’ll now have your payment hooked into these platforms and they can take advantage of serious impulse buying.
Could subvert Patreon in a way also. The implications are there I think.
It looks quite seamless from first glance. Was eventually going to happen I think given how
much time people spend on these platforms. Instagram influencers will have an easier time and may perhaps forgo Shopify-built sites for the sake of simplicity by routing fans to their Instagram marketplace. Can see YouTube introducing YouTube-shop to keep people within the Google ecosystem and compete with Facebook.
You are right, it is a great move. I do not like it either, nor use it, except when I need to find small commerce sites in my city. I know they do not have their own webpages, so it is useless to look them on Google, but they all have a Facebook Fan Page.
With this move, Facebook will get even more business, and less and less small companies will see the need to build and maintain their own sites.
It is also a great move against Shopify
I see this as a good move too. I've only recently had to start re-using Facebook just because so many of our local restaurants have been posting information about new hours or menus, etc (covid-related changes) only on their FB page. Even for those businesses that have a separate web site (and domain), they most often publish updates to only FB. It would make sense for FB to formalize this de-facto relationship.
FB, just came with a bang. with how prevalent fb is internationally. they can capture majority of the market share. sad day, for open solutions like woocommerce. & if FB had managed to get libra, off the ground, then they would be transacting more amounts of currency than anyone in the world. I won't put Shopify in the discussion, as they are only available in select 1st world countries.
Woocommerce fails to deliver a product that doesn't require a developer and or thousands in add-ons. It works for a very basic shop but after that you will need to hire a developer.
It's $45/month from the company behind WordPress for the majority of companies that don't need that level of customization. Past that, it's probably still cheaper than rolling your own solution or doing a panicked migration off Facebook Shops when they start closing the doors.
With the rise of services like Shopify, Etsy, etc. why are independent product manufacturers in the US / Europe still using Amazon? Is it the lack of the supply chain / item delivery that Amazon provides so well or is it something else? Hearing about how Amazon undercuts pretty much every seller on their system makes me think that sellers would be willing to jump in a heartbeat if given a viable alternative.
Facebook Shops seems like a Shopify clone to me ... but I'm not sure as I haven't really used Shopify (and I keep mistaking it for Spotify).
> why are independent product manufacturers in the US / Europe still using Amazon?
They do it to sell to people that are shopping on Amazon in spite of every problem with it. Never being undercut by Amazon isn't important to these sellers. Think, "I don't want to live in a world where someone gets undercut by Amazon better than us".
Many potential customers use Amazon as a search tool, as well as a source for (slightly) trustworthy reviews. If you are off Amazon, you miss out on those customers.
In addition to that, making your own webstore used to be more complicated and difficult than it is now; platforms like Shopify have really lowered the barrier to market entry.
Shopify is pretty good, but if you have a small independant shop the hard part is getting visitors. On that basis etsy is better, because it gets a lot of traffic, but I think facebook will be even more popular.
I'm a member of a couple of local groups, largely for buying/selling kids clothing/toys. Something like that wouldn't work so well on other platforms - getting cheap stuff locally.
Of course etsy has its own problems, with a large number of their shops just being fronts for aliexpress resellers.
It's the logistics network. Being able to just ship your product to an Amazon warehouse and then have them handle the rest on the cheap pretty much guarantees that using Amazon will come out cheaper.
Combine that with Amazon handling the bulk of customer support, returns, and payments and you end up making more money on Amazon than anywhere else.
I've actually tried to get a company to price match their own store on Amazon and they told me to just order it on Amazon because it was better for them.
I purchased an item directly from a manufacturer's own website, so there's no middle-man and no fees lost to selling on another platform.
The price difference between that and Amazon was so staggering, I returned the original purchase and re-purchased, this time from Amazon. Same product, but it was significantly cheaper on Amazon.
You will almost never get good prices from the manufacturer itself. That would undermine their standing with sales partners. So you will always get the rather high list price.
I also know companies that are going the complete FBA route now. Even if you order on their web shop, you get your item from Amazon.
Amazon is often cheaper.
When you account for the cost of a part time web dev and designer, as well as Shopify plugins and fees, I imagine the merchant probably prefers for me to buy on amazon.
Because that's where the customers are. Above all the Prime customers. And customers can have a lot more trust in Amazon's shipping speed and returns policy, than when ordering from an unknown.
A ton of people, when they want to buy something, put it into Amazon's search box. If a product doesn't show up there, it might as well not exist.
Also, Amazon reviews. I can't count the number of times I've chosen not to buy a product because Amazon's reviews warned me away. Ordering something from a small shop where there are no reviews, or the reviews seem fake or too positive? I feel like there's a much greater chance of being taken advantage of with a shoddy product.
End of the day, on Amazon I generally know exactly the quality I should expect, that it will arrive on time, and that I can return it if there are any issues.
That’s just PR speak. The truth, as it will be realized soon (if not suspected already), is that this will not be free. It will take away the freedom of the businesses and hold them to ransom for Facebook’s own benefit. Neither will it be simple to move out when the realization hits.
I wonder how they will handle returns and such like when you sell on eBay or Amazon. eBay started out as simply a middleman who helped bring buyers to sellers, and then stepped out of the way. When bad sellers started scamming people too much and eBay started to get a bad reputation, they imposed very strict rules that made sellers lives much more difficult, even the honest ones.
The PR speak says it will be simple. Sure. If your customer satisfaction metrics drop below 99.99999998% you lose your business. Simple!
Game theory would suggest that even if all individual business participants know this, they will still opt to sign up anyways because they're making locally optimum decisions.
The paradox of advertising is well known as well, yet ad spend continues to go up.
Unfortunately there aren't many solutions to the dilemma, there's always the illusion of choice but the reality ends up being coercive nonetheless.
I already have enough trouble with businesses that think Facebook is the internet. I wonder how many customers businesses lose by only engaging with Facebook users?
Multi-Level Marketing, e.g. that person from grade school who messages you out of the blue to ask how you're doing, and then tell you how much better you'd be doing with daily injections of IsoLeanIonigenTonicWater which you will also want to sell once you feel amazing/thin/virle/whatever.
I used to program in a co-working space for fun where the company next to me was trying to build one of those schemes with some sort of ionized water. The CEO was perpetually convinced that if he "just got 400,000$ in funding" everything was going to be great. All the employees seemed to hate it there. Was pretty annoying to listen to, but not as annoying as the guy a few cubicles away who was trying to sell gold.
Well, to be fair, there are digital product marketplaces that are still essentially monopolies (DriveThru, Kindle). I doubt Facebook is going to take over those markets any time soon.
This new offering feels a natural outcome now that the core product (fb.com, Messenger) user base starts to saturate. Previously they could just focus on international expansion on existing product, now the approach needs to shift. And that might be the reason why FB has so little in house built products v.s. products via acquisition, compared to Google.
So there's a growth pressure across the company's structure chain. From this point on, it would be interesting to see what other products FB would launch to leverage their huge social network. My 5 dollar bet would be cloud infra that compete with AWS and Azure - the selling point would be, hey join FB Cloud Infra and we'll help you reach 2 billion FB users!
They've allowed money transfer through Messenger for sometime now. The UX is probably the best I've had. I prefer sending money that way because it's through the debit card (easy set up), free, and instant.
In Europe at least they've rolled this back from the only 2 countries they tested it in (UK and France). You can still do donations to organizations in most countries, but no p2p money transfers.
To me, this looks like FB has finally accepted defeat in the social networking space. Over the years it has been deteriorating at delivering on its core mission of connecting people and supporting personal relationships.
I don’t think FB of the past would have green lighted this project, the hit on its brand positioning is significant. It will only accelerate people’s disassociation between FB and a social network.
Effectively, at this point they’re just cashing in on their brand equity and milking their user base.
Do you know about Facebook Watch, their streaming service with real original TV shows? Their switch from 'just' a social network was years and years ago
Some people go to malls as a social activity. Others like to read product reviews by people (sometimes well known bloggers), or watch youtube videos. Sometimes people even ask their friends for product recommendations. Shopping is to some a very social thing.
For luxury, apparel and experiential, likes and engagement drive interest while more reviews deter interest as who aspires to own something everyone has already?
Seems like a win to me... They get to diversify and they can handle payments etc... so you get that 1-click experience. I am not sure how they will handle shady vendors / returns though... Amazon invests a lot in the customer experience but will FB?
The more low hanging fruit these companies pluck, the more obvious it becomes how much of the internet wants to be connected to real identities.
Facebook is largely a real person <-> online person connector and a very crude version of everyday items such as photographs, calendars, small shops, etc.
Except computers lift the constraint of copying being expensive in the real world, while the internet lifts the constraint of copied object being expensive and slow to move around.
While Amazon provides inventory and delivery infrastructure to businesses and an internet storefront for customers, Facebook hardly provides anything that isn't trivial to copy - they rely solely on network effects and as a result - can largely be seen as a middleman parasite, worthy of extermination.
> in fact most ppl would not like their friends to know what they re purchasing
Not true by my experience. In fact, lots of people go shopping together.
Sure, some stuff is private. But most clothes, electronics, computer games, household, furniture etc etc is stuff people buy and share around all the time.
"Merchants will get control over customization and merchandising for their storefronts inside Facebook and Instagram, while managing their products, inventory, orders, and fulfillment directly from within Shopify."
"Consumers will be able to easily find, browse, and buy products through a purpose-built, immersive experience in these apps they use every day. Checkout will be powered by Shopify for merchants, with Shopify also offering Instagram Checkout to select merchants testing the new feature."
Facebook wants to capture all discovery through FB and Insta directly competing with Amazon and Google Shopping.
It seems like you want to sell through multiple channels without being too dependent on any one of them? This could be a very good channel for some early adopters, but then the economics of it could change pretty quickly.
There's been a Shopify->Facebook/Instagram integration for ages. Personally, I found it to be pretty garbage - but I'm sure they've gained a ton of data while running it.
Facebook Shop just sounds like the next evolution of this.
I think there's a place for FB Shops, mostly with "small-small" businesses, think "kiosks in the middle of the mall" or "plastic two-colour sign stapled to electrical poles" type of small, but any reasonable business that cares about it's brand and wants to maintain control over itself would still likely be attracted to a more flexible and powerful platform like Shopify..
You give up a lot of control when you use FB, they control branding, UI, UX, etc.. if you don't care about those things and you just want to sell stuff, that's probably fine..
I say this of course without knowing what the future holds for FB Shops..
Facebook is basically already the shopping mall food court and bus stop, they're just adding the stores now I guess..
> Facebook wants to capture all discovery through FB and Insta directly competing with Amazon and Google Shopping.
I don't have a Facebook account. As a result, I cannot "discover" anything on the platform. Facebook continues to become a less popular platform and their name continues to loose value thanks to constant involvement in scandals. I may be a minority, but I suspect I'm part of a growing minority.
I can't imagine many shops using this as a primary storefront and I can't imagine this offering much value to small businesses as a supplemental storefront.
Besides, who would be naive enough to trust Facebook with the primary storefront for a serious business? They have no obligation to create a good experience for sellers. All they care about is feeding the ad machine with more user data.
there was a period when i thought similarly (pretty soon, facebook won't be "cool" anymore) but it came and went. people are complaining more about facebook's disturbing moves, but they're not doing anything about it.
I think it's happening. It's just very slow. Most people wont delete their account. They'll just start using it less and less.
Facebook hasn't been "cool" for a long time. It's not a platform most people want to be on. It's just so ubiquitous that many people feel obligated to be on it. Unless that changes, Facebook (the social media site, not the company) will continue to die a very slow death.
Exactly the case for me. I just routed facebook.com to 127.0.0.1 in my hosts file. I realized that I was going there out of habit and I always felt worse when I was done. It's been one of the best things I've done this year.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 189 ms ] threadIs Facebook Shops not a direct competitor to Shopify? Or is this just "embrace, extend, and extinguish"?
Alternatively, they could be looking to make FB Shops an advertising platform, similar to Amazon Seller Central, where they don't care who you buy from, but they want each seller to pay for ads and/or payment processing.
Im not saying that's what they are doing, but its a way to skim off all transactions instead of trying to force business into facebook.
It seems like a bad deal for Shopify sellers. They must pay FB 5% and Shopify 2% of each transaction. If they jettisoned Shopify, they'd just pay FB 5%.
Depends how serious FB wants to invest in building out their own e-commerce backend platform. Not sure it is that valuable to them when IG is the more differentiating part of the product.
For keeping a database of photos and descriptions & integrating with APIs?
Doesn't that seem overpriced?
https://gumroad.com/
Merchants are paying Shopify per transaction while customers shop on another site & pay using Google Pay, Paypal, FB Pay, or Apple Pay.
I'm wondering how Facebook Shops is going to impact Shopify,Amazon and Google Shopping in the long term.
Shopify is doing nothing on a transaction level & yet they have a stock that requires growth, so they are charging 2% per transaction.
I kid you not.
Anyway out of all those listed, I would think Shopify has the biggest to gain. While I dont know enough about the possibility of Facebook doing Triple E, at least All of a sudden Shopify's insane valuation makes a little more sense and justifying the possible potential. Currently market cap at ˜90B and trading at ˜50x revenue.
A mid level employee who joined around their IPO, with ~$300k of stock vesting over four years would be worth almost $18MM today.
Wow.
Shopify is only using FB's merchant APIs: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/commerce-platform/ And that's it.
They are allowing Shopify merchants to publish their inventories to the FB store. In exchange Shopify wants 2% of every transaction and 30 bucks a month or 9 bucks for their "lite" version.
Or you can just use FB directly to stock your store & pay Shopify zilch.
Also the founder is an egomaniac and would never sell.
EDIT: thanks for the responses. Will block at DNS :)
Having stated that, consider if you eliminate Facebook from your life and have issues on the web, and the answer to those issues is not "create a Facebook account" then it should be relatively safe to remove Facebook from your life.
Does shit break because something, something FB SDK? Nope, at least not shit I care about, and not FB.
But for the most part, I get to mostly forget that FB even exists.
Since FB lacks strong values it gets imposed on the wider community, but such is life. The only true option is using or building alternatives. Trying to chain the monster, where every individual positive attributes always has to be controlled and directed from some other central body, whom we then also have to trust with even more power, sounds like a losing game to me.
Not using FB isn't that difficult anyway. There's plenty of group messaging apps that achieve much of the same.
More seriously, I don't think they're requiring exclusivity.
The "Instagram Shop" part of the offering they're describing, sounds less like an independent system, and more like a way for independent creators to get the same benefits as those large partners, where they can take a picture of the fancy sweater they made, have it appear on trending, and then there can be a "Buy" button right there on the post everyone's sharing. It's an Instagram integration for the Facebook Shop system.
I also don't think there's going to be a separate "Instagram Shop" landing page for a given account, per se; if there is an index view, it'll just be a collection of the buyable items posted by a given Instagram account. The expectation, though, would be that "buyable" posts would just be part of a brand page's regular feed of posts. The "buy button" is just an enhancement to what the account was already doing, rather than a whole separate storefront to set up.
I'm guessing, in the end, what you'd really be purchasing via the Instagram hosted inline purchase flow, is a Facebook Shop product SKU. You'd probably get an email from Facebook Shopping about your product, etc. In other words, "Facebook Shop" would be a payment processor / hosted commerce backend, that happens to have a flagship front-end UX; and Instagram would be an alternative front-end UX.
> Also what about for folks who don't use either of those services?
Given the way they seem to be building it, there's definitely some backend core with an API that looks a lot like Shopify's API. I'm guessing they'll offer third-party developer access to that API.
"Also what about for folks who don't use either of those services?" Then obviously you won't use Facebook Shop, you can use Amazon or any other ecommerce service.
Both are wrong and need correction, but I'll take facebook's "spyware" any day.
As a programmer one of our tasks is to build abstractions and simplifications. To me it looks like facebook has a near monopoly on a social network that collects and sells data and China has one big social network, that has everyone on it. From a strictly interface perspective both are the same. Both have backdoors.
What I find troubling is that people seem to accept Facebook as a hero when you could as well make the case the china is more heroic for its people. It was china the pulled a majority of people out of poverty not U.S.A which has a lot of homeless people.
Capitalism with monopolies that sleep with the government is not that different from chinese style capitalism, which on paper has to serve the people.
The biggest problem with capitalism is the "legal person" definition and limited liability exception. Offshoring is also a shit idea clearly.
Talking about china is relevant for hackers because probably china might be more sincere about open source than microsoft with its profit motive. Anti-china rhetoric will just ruin such discussions rather than allow people to get balanced perspectives.
It has nothing to do with racism or reasonableness of life. US is not totalitarian (despite having many negative qualities). China is totalitarian.
To take the case of France, what is it doing in Guiana ? France may be liberal to its people but it suppresses people in Guiana in a totalitarian way.
Because if so it's a non-starter for myself and anyone comfortable with the stripe api and/or shopify at least.
I won't see those businesses, but I know I am a minority, when it comes to this.
Maybe effective? Smart implies a bit too much imo. For a while now, users have been using pages to promote their businesses and using FB pay for transactions. It seems this was inevitable, and I'm more surprising how long it took than how "really smart" it is.
Everything Facebook builds has to scale to billions immediately. Could be a contributing factor to why it took them this long to do this.
Thank you for being self aware enough to know that you are in the minority when it comes to not having Facebook.
Most posts by people who don’t use FB and post to HN feign ignorance and say something like “I haven’t used FB in 10 years. Does anyone still use it?”
I vaguely recall a HN comment on a different subject which drew a parallel to the famous Yogi Berra quip, “Nobody goes there anymore, too crowded.” It sounds like one of his classic oxymorons, but there is a deeper implication with respect to tastemakers/early adopters/elite users who flee anything once it has its “Eternal September.”
Yes, it’s too crowded, but what we’re really saying with a line like that is, “Too crowded with the wrong kind of people.”
But for me, Facebook is crowded with plenty of the right kind of people. Lots of my climbing tribe coördinate trips on FB, and I miss out on that. There are multiple Volvo enthusiast groups on FB, and I miss out on get-togethers if nobody remembers to text me.
So, scarface74, I’m with you on the importance of being self-aware about the fact that while we may not use a thing for ethical reasons, or because it no longer adds value to our lives, but nevertheless it is still crowded with people who have perfectly valid reasons for liking it.
You wish it was that way but you do have one. An increasing number of businesses submit their financial data to Facebook and Facebook uses that data to track your offline activities. Few months ago they made some of this info available to you.
https://www.facebook.com/help/2207256696182627
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/28/off-fac...
As pointed out downthread, a lot more people on earth don’t have FB than do.
I’d also wager plenty of people who’ve stopped using it still technically “have” an account but never use it.
So how do you define that “the majority” use Facebook?
For the markets that Facebook is common in, it has enough of a user base that it can be an all-in-one for a small business.
First subtract China where it isn't available and you're down to a possible market of 6.35 Billion. But then start subtracting the number of children in the world, the number too poor to spend any money on anything FB would be selling or advertising and random other places where it might be blocked.
That you just ignore the country with the largest population because Facebook doesn’t operate there is a big tell.
Also, why would you assume the kind of products people might sell and thus their pricing? I’ve seen (and bought!) stuff online for ~ 11THB. 35 US cents.
You can say a lot of people use Facebook and that’s fine. But if you’re going to say “the majority of people” you really need to define which people you’re talking about.
But to be even more blunt. FB no more cares about people spending 35 cents online than Apple cares about people who only want to/can buy a phone that cost $100.
You keep your Facebook account for the rare occasion that it’s useful. I logged into mine to keep up with old friends during covid, rather than waiting for reunions to find out if someone died.
Could subvert Patreon in a way also. The implications are there I think.
Next, Youtube to partner with IKEA to bring you a virtual reality furniture shop /s
Facebook Shops seems like a Shopify clone to me ... but I'm not sure as I haven't really used Shopify (and I keep mistaking it for Spotify).
https://news.shopify.com/shopify-partners-with-facebook-to-h...
They do it to sell to people that are shopping on Amazon in spite of every problem with it. Never being undercut by Amazon isn't important to these sellers. Think, "I don't want to live in a world where someone gets undercut by Amazon better than us".
In addition to that, making your own webstore used to be more complicated and difficult than it is now; platforms like Shopify have really lowered the barrier to market entry.
I'm a member of a couple of local groups, largely for buying/selling kids clothing/toys. Something like that wouldn't work so well on other platforms - getting cheap stuff locally.
Of course etsy has its own problems, with a large number of their shops just being fronts for aliexpress resellers.
Combine that with Amazon handling the bulk of customer support, returns, and payments and you end up making more money on Amazon than anywhere else.
I've actually tried to get a company to price match their own store on Amazon and they told me to just order it on Amazon because it was better for them.
Amazon is often cheaper.
When you account for the cost of a part time web dev and designer, as well as Shopify plugins and fees, I imagine the merchant probably prefers for me to buy on amazon.
A ton of people, when they want to buy something, put it into Amazon's search box. If a product doesn't show up there, it might as well not exist.
Also, Amazon reviews. I can't count the number of times I've chosen not to buy a product because Amazon's reviews warned me away. Ordering something from a small shop where there are no reviews, or the reviews seem fake or too positive? I feel like there's a much greater chance of being taken advantage of with a shoddy product.
End of the day, on Amazon I generally know exactly the quality I should expect, that it will arrive on time, and that I can return it if there are any issues.
That’s just PR speak. The truth, as it will be realized soon (if not suspected already), is that this will not be free. It will take away the freedom of the businesses and hold them to ransom for Facebook’s own benefit. Neither will it be simple to move out when the realization hits.
It’s a trap, IMNSHO!
The PR speak says it will be simple. Sure. If your customer satisfaction metrics drop below 99.99999998% you lose your business. Simple!
The paradox of advertising is well known as well, yet ad spend continues to go up.
Unfortunately there aren't many solutions to the dilemma, there's always the illusion of choice but the reality ends up being coercive nonetheless.
Do you mean payment chargebacks, refunds and fraud tickets?
If you think you were being tracked across every mouse hover and scroll now, imagine what it’ll look like when there’s this much on the line.
So there's a growth pressure across the company's structure chain. From this point on, it would be interesting to see what other products FB would launch to leverage their huge social network. My 5 dollar bet would be cloud infra that compete with AWS and Azure - the selling point would be, hey join FB Cloud Infra and we'll help you reach 2 billion FB users!
They've allowed money transfer through Messenger for sometime now. The UX is probably the best I've had. I prefer sending money that way because it's through the debit card (easy set up), free, and instant.
To me, this looks like FB has finally accepted defeat in the social networking space. Over the years it has been deteriorating at delivering on its core mission of connecting people and supporting personal relationships.
I don’t think FB of the past would have green lighted this project, the hit on its brand positioning is significant. It will only accelerate people’s disassociation between FB and a social network.
Effectively, at this point they’re just cashing in on their brand equity and milking their user base.
They’ll pay in terms of churn and decreased LTV.
Shopping on the other hand, is a private and individualistic activity.
I feel this is far removed from their core mission.
Some people go to malls as a social activity. Others like to read product reviews by people (sometimes well known bloggers), or watch youtube videos. Sometimes people even ask their friends for product recommendations. Shopping is to some a very social thing.
Not for me. Especially if I'm buying something fun/non-boring.
Facebook is largely a real person <-> online person connector and a very crude version of everyday items such as photographs, calendars, small shops, etc.
Except computers lift the constraint of copying being expensive in the real world, while the internet lifts the constraint of copied object being expensive and slow to move around.
While Amazon provides inventory and delivery infrastructure to businesses and an internet storefront for customers, Facebook hardly provides anything that isn't trivial to copy - they rely solely on network effects and as a result - can largely be seen as a middleman parasite, worthy of extermination.
And the shops would need to either duplicate inventory or lock it in facebook.
They 've tried this before, and failed
https://mashable.com/2012/02/21/facebook-brands-closing-stor...
I don't think it will be better this time
Not true by my experience. In fact, lots of people go shopping together. Sure, some stuff is private. But most clothes, electronics, computer games, household, furniture etc etc is stuff people buy and share around all the time.
"Merchants will get control over customization and merchandising for their storefronts inside Facebook and Instagram, while managing their products, inventory, orders, and fulfillment directly from within Shopify."
"Consumers will be able to easily find, browse, and buy products through a purpose-built, immersive experience in these apps they use every day. Checkout will be powered by Shopify for merchants, with Shopify also offering Instagram Checkout to select merchants testing the new feature."
Facebook wants to capture all discovery through FB and Insta directly competing with Amazon and Google Shopping.
That’s not to say there aren’t many on facebook who will use this.
Facebook Shop just sounds like the next evolution of this.
I won’t shop with sites powered by Facebook so there must be at least some segment of the market that Shopify can still hold.
You give up a lot of control when you use FB, they control branding, UI, UX, etc.. if you don't care about those things and you just want to sell stuff, that's probably fine..
I say this of course without knowing what the future holds for FB Shops..
Facebook is basically already the shopping mall food court and bus stop, they're just adding the stores now I guess..
For 1 million "merchants"? in other words $100k per merchant.
Many of these are t-shirt & mug sales sort of people.
I don't have a Facebook account. As a result, I cannot "discover" anything on the platform. Facebook continues to become a less popular platform and their name continues to loose value thanks to constant involvement in scandals. I may be a minority, but I suspect I'm part of a growing minority.
I can't imagine many shops using this as a primary storefront and I can't imagine this offering much value to small businesses as a supplemental storefront.
Besides, who would be naive enough to trust Facebook with the primary storefront for a serious business? They have no obligation to create a good experience for sellers. All they care about is feeding the ad machine with more user data.
Facebook hasn't been "cool" for a long time. It's not a platform most people want to be on. It's just so ubiquitous that many people feel obligated to be on it. Unless that changes, Facebook (the social media site, not the company) will continue to die a very slow death.