how are those going to magically just-work without logistics and conflict resolution?
(unfortunately) worked pretty well for amazon, and the concerns were the same
Introducing Facebook Shops
41–50 of 286 posts
Re: Introducing Facebook Shops
#42"We’re also working more closely with partners like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce..." Is Facebook Shops not a direct competitor to Shopify? Or is this just "embrace, extend, and extinguish"?
Both partner and potential competitor?
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.
Re: Introducing Facebook Shops
#43With 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…
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.
Re: Introducing Facebook Shops
#44"We’re also working more closely with partners like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce..." Is Facebook Shops not a direct competitor to Shopify? Or is this just "embrace, extend, and extinguish"?
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 an…
Amazon cares who you buy from. Amazon Basics pushes out sellers.
Re: Introducing Facebook Shops
#45"We’re also working more closely with partners like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce..." Is Facebook Shops not a direct competitor to Shopify? Or is this just "embrace, extend, and extinguish"?
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.
Re: Introducing Facebook Shops
#46I dislike Facebook, but this is a really smart way to grab a market share. Most businesses need minimal online presence so FB front is sufficient. I won't see those businesses, but I know I am a minority, when it comes to this.
> really smart 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.
I work in banking. Everything we do, that's easier elsewhere, is harder in banking, because it's a bank (regulated, money, etc).
Everything Facebook builds has to scale to billions immediately. Could be a contributing factor to why it took them this long to do this.
Re: Introducing Facebook Shops
#47"We’re also working more closely with partners like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce..." Is Facebook Shops not a direct competitor to Shopify? Or is this just "embrace, extend, and extinguish"?
Both partner and potential competitor? 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.
Why not just fork Magento? I bet with Facebook's infrastructure you could get it running at Shopify scale for a few million bucks a year.
Re: Introducing Facebook Shops
#48I dislike Facebook, but this is a really smart way to grab a market share. Most businesses need minimal online presence so FB front is sufficient. I won't see those businesses, but I know I am a minority, when it comes to this.
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.
Re: Introducing Facebook Shops
#49I dislike Facebook, but this is a really smart way to grab a market share. Most businesses need minimal online presence so FB front is sufficient. I won't see those businesses, but I know I am a minority, when it comes to this.
Random non rant: 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 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.
Re: Introducing Facebook Shops
#50Brace yourself for the tide of MLM FB shops
What is MLM?