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In Bangladesh, the majority of e-commerce now happens on Facebook

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Re: In Bangladesh, the majority of e-commerce now happens on Facebook

#31

Post by ryder9 »

lopis wrote: post #21
oefrha wrote: post #19

To be clear I know nothing about Bangladesh, but obvious contradictions cast doubt on this piece of reporting. An obvious one: subtitle says In Bangladesh, there is no Amazon. There is no eBay. If you want to buy a dress or a crested finch from the comfort of your home, you have to use Facebook. Then somewhere in the article: The phenomenon has grown so much over the years that the number of stores on Facebook now ec…

I'm always surprised when garbage articles like these make it to the top of HN. I guess HN is not immune to "i only read the title" kind of threads. And since it sounds like an anti-facebook kind of article, it gets HN's blessing, and off to the top it goes. There was one more thing you missed that is not explicitly in the article. In virtually any country there are groups on facebook to buy pretty much anything, inc…

pretty funny given how much of a sense of superiority & ego people on this site have over reddit

Re: In Bangladesh, the majority of e-commerce now happens on Facebook

#32

Post by yesenadam »

mmsimanga wrote: post #29
nathancahill wrote: post #25

One interesting advantage that I didn't see mentioned in the article is that Facebook data is often included for free in mobile phone plans, or as part of a "Social Media" package that's cheaper than other data.

This is true in parts of Africa I live and visit. Network providers sell data bundles specifically for Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter. These social media data bundles are way cheaper than "normal" data which enables you to visit the "Internet". So much news and business networking happens on Whatsapp you might as well call WhatsApp and Facebook the internet for most people in these countries.

Yep, I have a lot of friends in the Philippines who I chat with on Facebook. Many of them, probably a large majority, don't have email or internet access on their phones apart from that. It's a free deal that comes with the phone.

Re: In Bangladesh, the majority of e-commerce now happens on Facebook

#34

Post by monadic2 »

blantonl wrote: post #26
monadic2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh apparently all I need to do to justify literally any business model a) have a small mountain of cash and b) make it convenient. People will just give up on trying to imagine a way to do things better. Why bother when I already do things as well as anyone can imagine?

Making a business transaction convenient typically involves a process of imagining a way to do things better.

Does it? Not from my experience on either side of the transaction.... in my eyes all of the “innovation” facebook has produced (along with every other large tech company) has been straightforward, by the book scaling of extant business processes with technology.

Anyway if there’s a process it can hardly be called imagination now can it? It’s just human-level algorithms fed by cash.

If you can’t imagine how to improve this you’re certainly lacking for either observational skill or bound by some dogmatic worldview.

Re: In Bangladesh, the majority of e-commerce now happens on Facebook

#35

Post by ShorsHammer »

There's a staggering amount of endangered wildlife trade occurring openly on facebook in developing countries. Monitoring groups have a tough time breaking into these things due to the gated nature of the platform and after that paranoid private groups.

Do hope FB one day tries to take this seriously as they are the only people who can realistically access this content completely, law enforcement is more reactionary than proactive on these events and tend to miss the small windows of opportunity, there's plenty of people happy to offer up tooling for autodetection of illegal wildlife trade activities.

Re: In Bangladesh, the majority of e-commerce now happens on Facebook

#36

Post by zajd »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #17
luckylion wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe that Facebook is capable of adding a similar filter to match "to change hands"? If they were capable, what could the explanation be for why they don't?

Because there are many, many langauges and idioms in the world, and AI isn't good enough to do this accurately at the moment. Given that Bangladesh is pretty poor and small, the likelihood is that if they were to pour resources into it, eventually the business would pull out of the country, as it wouldn't be profitable. Note that if they block to change hands, then people will start using another idiom, so a mere fil…

> Because there are many, many langauges and idioms in the world, and AI isn't good enough to do this accurately at the moment.

If they cared they just wouldn't use AI and hire employees to review listings. I love how these big tech companies pretend like using AI to filter things is necessary while they sit on absurd margins. Maybe they can't support the same volume, but so what?

Re: In Bangladesh, the majority of e-commerce now happens on Facebook

#37

Post by baby »

yesenadam wrote: post #32
mmsimanga wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true in parts of Africa I live and visit. Network providers sell data bundles specifically for Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter. These social media data bundles are way cheaper than "normal" data which enables you to visit the "Internet". So much news and business networking happens on Whatsapp you might as well call WhatsApp and Facebook the internet for most people in these countries.

Yep, I have a lot of friends in the Philippines who I chat with on Facebook. Many of them, probably a large majority, don't have email or internet access on their phones apart from that. It's a free deal that comes with the phone.

Reminds me that we used to have something similar in France a long time ago. Some websites came for free with your mobile plan. I think it was whatsapp and fb too?

Re: In Bangladesh, the majority of e-commerce now happens on Facebook

#38

Post by awinter-py »

e-commerce via social media terrifies me because

1. my buying history is an unfair advantage for ads that want to burrow into my brain

2. payment processors can make money without selling data!

businesses should have to pick 'paid or free' and not share behavioral data across that wall

'F-commerce' is right

Re: In Bangladesh, the majority of e-commerce now happens on Facebook

#39

Post by ovebepari »

A Bangladeshi here. Let me make something clear first:

- Facebook doesn't handle the transactions (yet), some mobile banking is used for transactions.

- Facebook works because you can sponsor a video of your product explaining the condition and people are very skeptic here about things, so video works, pictures like amazon don't.

- It's still a developing country and people like offers and facebook reaches bigger audience/customers.

- People do comment on Facebook, great for honest product reviews.

One might think of Bangladesh's GDP and think things are good. To be honest things are better than before but that GDP amount is inflated by the riches. We're still an agricultural country starting to make our way through the intellect based economy.

Hope that helps.

Re: In Bangladesh, the majority of e-commerce now happens on Facebook

#40

Post by fardeem »

Fellow bangladeshi here. Its been very interesting to see the comments on this post and it gives me lots to think about.

I will say, having operated these facebook based businesses, it is literally the worst and I can't wait for something else to take its place.

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