
Introducing Facebook Shops - davidbarker
https://about.fb.com/news/2020/05/introducing-facebook-shops/
======
saadalem
Small businesses operated either individually or by less than 10 people. A
bunch of customers buy products/services from these businesses. So they need a
better way to:

Engage with their customers

Sell and manage product/service deliveries

Target specific customer audience

Show products/services availability

Whatsapp could be the right solution not facebook apps.

Also a combination of Yelp and Facebook/Whatsapp could lead replacing small
business websites(I'm not telling that no smb website should exist) that going
to make a fortune. The platform needs to accomplish these three things :

The ability to list core info like contact details, hours of operation, and
service offerings in a minimalist fashion.

The ability to solicit feedback (not ratings) from customers in a low-
friction, high-upside way.

An ad system that let's a 60 year-old luddite set up a campaign in less than 3
minutes without having to call anyone.

There's a lot to tell but I'll leave you with these thoughts.

~~~
phreack
I have always thought about what it would take for Whatsapp to lose their
place as the dominant chat app and you finally nailed it. If I ever start
getting ads or requests for reviews or anything remotely related to someone
selling something to me, as a personal message because of automated Facebook
tools, I'd get myself and everyone I know off the platform in a matter of
seconds.

On the other hand, for information requests they already have Whatsapp for
businesses and it works fine, several luddites I know use it.

~~~
oblio
> I have always thought about what it would take for Whatsapp to lose their
> place as the dominant chat app and you finally nailed it.

Unfortunately, that's not how these things work. I don't know of any
mainstream platform that died because of ads.

You have to keep in mind the fact that the average person on this site has a
total different attitude to technology and its warts than most other people.

~~~
72deluxe
Tangentially, I know they mentioned the "adpocolypse" for YouTube but recently
it's insane the amount of adverts being shown. It's really putting me off
using it.

But as you say, mainstream platforms with no competitors seem to get away with
it.

~~~
nicky0
I've been youtube pro subscriber for a while. Zero ads, it's heaven. Really
transforms the youtube experience.

~~~
72deluxe
Does this also work for YouTube in smart TVs etc.?

Does it permit playing of videos audio-only? I use backing tracks on my Honor
Play but it has terrible screen burn so after an hour of instrument practice
my screen looks like the comments section (which keeps moving on YouTube)

~~~
tssva
It does work on smart TVs. You get can use backing tracks without them being
on screen by either using the regular YouTube and putting it in the background
or using Youtube Music, included with YouTube Premium, which has an option to
play audio only.

------
mrkramer
Crucial information from Shopify:

"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.

~~~
buboard
FB should be merciful and buy shopify before murdering them

~~~
sbarre
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..

------
jameslevy
"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"?

~~~
nickff
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.

~~~
basch
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/](https://www.ecomdash.com/) and
[https://www.shipstation.com/](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.

~~~
nerfhammer
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.

------
einpoklum
I just wish we could read on HN tomorrow:

"Introducing Antitrust action against Facebook (justice.gov)"

~~~
jedberg
That's not likely to happen under this President unless MZ says something
nasty about him.

Otherwise you'll probably have to wait until the next admin at least.

~~~
einpoklum
This is likely to happen neither under a Biden administration nor under a
Trump one.

------
Thorentis
It's fascinating to see these tech giants fight each other for control over
the Internet empire. Eventually I think we will see 1 by 1 they will fall, and
a couple will remain. This is Facebook's attempt to take on Amazon and Google
both at once, and given their huge user base and method of engagement, they
may just have a shot at it.

I can see it now. Scroll Instagram to see photos of your friends wearing new
clothes, "like" the photo. Get an ad the next day for that same product now
available from a Facebook Shop for 40% off. Use your Facebook Credits to buy
it.

~~~
gitgud
They might also implement object detection within photos and match things in
the photo to products you could buy... on Facebook...

~~~
londons_explore
Google could do this with Chrome... They already have the "right click, search
google for things looking like this image".

All they'd need to do is make the UI more discoverable and make the search
results include products, and they'd be $1B up on revenue...

~~~
woodrowbarlow
i don't think the "search by image" tool is doing as much computer vision as
you think it is -- it seems to mostly match shapes and colors.

------
TheLastMan
I don't need to bother reading dystopian sci-fi anymore, it's all happening
around me.

~~~
einpoklum
One of the frightening things is when you notice that, as society becomes more
dystopian (e.g. more totalitarian, more extremely unequal in the division of
wealth etc.), there doesn't develop the strong awareness that it _is_
dystopian. It that the sense of what's normal and acceptable degrades. At best
you get this weak sense of a general malaise.

~~~
Kiro
So either people are clueless sheep that don't know better or they simply
don't care. The first seems pretty patronizing to me and the latter means we
are in minority with our definition of dystopia.

~~~
72deluxe
I think they just don't care. I had a look at Marx's ideas of people being in
a certain class and engaging in a class struggle, rising up.

But it didn't happen because people are mostly just selfish.

They don't care if they're in a certain "class", they don't care if they're
being sold to, they generally don't care if they're being tracked. They just
care about being able to do what they want to do.

As long as it doesn't interfere with their life too much (or even if it does,
if there's no alternative), they don't do anything about it. And with the
modern population, as long as it is extremely easy they will do it.

I am not sure if this is good or bad, or just an inherent part of human
nature.

------
CosmicShadow
As someone with an Etsy shop this got me excited for a second, but unless I
missed something, this is just some sort of link from your FB Page to some
integrated shop? We use Etsy because we get all these sales from people using
it to search for stuff, but I guess if we only have 80 people and spend no
money on FB ads or trying to grow our page, this is essentially completely
useless as we already have links to our shop...

We were hoping this was some sort of shop built into marketplace that was
curated or searchable or something, since we've had some success selling on
there, but it's a complete garbage pile and dealing with people is awful and
doesn't scale very fast. People flake out like crazy, no way to manage
messages well or anything. Missed opportunity.

Maybe for Instagram, having a shop built into your profile could be awesome
instead of saying, "link in profile" then having your user search for the
product they say starting at your site homepage.

~~~
codecamper
If you make a shop on FB Shops, please know that you do not need Shopify to do
that. Shopify provides no benefit and charges you per transaction.

------
koolba
This is long overdue. I bet they’re working on a PayPal competitor and
eventually their own in-house data driven credit system.

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.

~~~
richardbrevig
> I bet they're working on a PayPal competitor...

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.

~~~
vasco
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.

~~~
tixocloud
Any reason why? Seems to be a strong digital payments ecosystem in the U.K.
and Europe that would've made it work well.

------
swagonomixxx
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).

~~~
Spivak
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.

~~~
fuzzybeard
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.

~~~
raxxorrax
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.

------
destitude
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?

~~~
Kye
Not many. Most of their customers also think Facebook is the internet.

------
swiley
Yes tie yourself to a large platform that can and will shut you down for
political/social reasons.

Or just stick a paypal button on a static site.

~~~
fsociety
Yep that worked well for Wikileaks

~~~
Tepix
Yep, Wikileaks is still around.

Their store is at [https://wikileaks.shop/](https://wikileaks.shop/) or
[https://eu.wikileaks.shop/](https://eu.wikileaks.shop/)

------
buboard
Hm, unlike classifieds, shopping is not a social activity, in fact most ppl
would not like their friends to know what they re purchasing.

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...](https://mashable.com/2012/02/21/facebook-brands-closing-stores-
fcommerce/?europe=true)

I don't think it will be better this time

~~~
joelbluminator
> 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.

------
mnehring
Has anyone seen anything specifically mentioned about an API? I did a quick
search and didn't see anything mentioned, but if they integrated with 3rd
party tools, either they have an API or they already programmed a feed
scraping tool of some sort.

I suppose if there is an API, but they haven't released public documentation,
it might be possible to find out details about many of the endpoint from
WooCommerce's code.

~~~
busymom0
As someone who’s been burnt by using their IG API before when they decided to
shut it down out of nowhere, I won’t trust their API for this.

~~~
mnehring
For my personal selling, I wouldn't trust the API's:-). However, I have a
product that helps a particular retail vertical list their items for sale
online. I imagine my clients wouldn't mind having their items automatically
cross-posted to Facebook's shop as well. (So, if Facebook kills the API, it
would kill a feature in my product, but not my whole product.) That's why I
was wondering about the API. I'll probably need to do some reading and
searching today when I get some time!

------
dzonga
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.

~~~
ibdf
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.

~~~
Kye
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.

------
yalogin
What took it so long for FB to do this? This is honestly one of the first
things they should have done.

~~~
Mengkudulangsat
They are waiting for Libra.

------
amelius
Another BigCorp trying to put a gate around an existing market, this time it's
retail. Yuck.

~~~
riazrizvi
"Is your store doing well? Have you expanded to a couple of other locations
successfully? Is it time for you to create a broader franchise? ... Don't
worry, we've been watching, and we already made this information available to
big stores in your area who were willing to pay for the privilege. That's why
Big-store-chain is already negotiating a better contract with your supply
chain. I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted. Thank you for your business." \-
American Edge. It's our edge, not yours.

------
Traster
That advert is an incredibly tone deaf advert. Support the little guy! Yes,
support little Mark Zuckerberg and his sole control of a $600Bn company. Has
it ever occured to anyone in a multi billion dollar corporation that maybe it
doesn't come across well to pretend you're fighting for the little guy. Why
not take a break for once and just say "Hey, we're fucking enormous, no one
even browses the web anymore, they browse facebook, so we've deigned to give
you the smallest sliver of access to our amazing hoard of treasure - customers
(in exchange for 90% of your profits)". At least it would be honest.

~~~
creddit
As always, when you’re everyone’s favorite punching bag: damned if you do,
damned if you don’t. Would love to know how you got to them taking 90% of the
profits. Are they even charging commissions or is this a scheme to drive more
ads purchases?

~~~
Traster
I love it, spend a decade engaging in scummy behaviour, and then have people
completely ignore that and claim that you're just a punching bag. Do you know
how you become the everyone's favourite punching bag? Stand by and watch
whilst people use your platform to commit genocide, and then tell everyone
you're looking out for the little guy.

Damned if you do enable a genocide, damned if you... oh no, just the first
one.

~~~
creddit
This would be a great rebuttal to someone who said “I like that Facebook helps
people kill people” but is a pretty weak rebuttal to someone calling out you
making up fee structures for the product and your silly moralizing over a
company launching... checks notes... a way for people to sell things on the
internet. The horror.

------
kumarvvr
Shopify will be the loser here.

FB will use them, chew and spit them out.

FB only wants shopify now because it has all the data, inventory,
categorization, etc.

The next logical move would be to buy a company like wix, then target smb with
their sales and marketing team to help them make digital storefronts on FB,
integrate with their social platform and then ditch shopify.

Edit : Also, there is no way to tell if your competitor is paying to get your
data and costomer info.

This will lead to an overall weakening of the mom and pop store operations,
where they are disrupted ever more easily by the competition.

~~~
ta17711771
True. Square bought Weebly for this.

------
saltedonion
I don’t see this as a positive for FB at all.

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.

~~~
carlinmack
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

~~~
saltedonion
Didn’t know they had original TV shows, but I thought at least they will build
social features into Watch.

Shopping on the other hand, is a private and individualistic activity.

I feel this is far removed from their core mission.

~~~
chillacy
> is a private and individualistic activity

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.

------
suyash
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?

~~~
derefr
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.

------
dadarepublic
Tangentially related:

>'GrokNet', the AI behind Facebook Shops, looks for body type, skin tone,
location, socioeconomic class in photos

[https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/groknet-the-ai-behind-
fac....](https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/groknet-the-ai-behind-fac.html)

Is there good reason to be concerned on this level?

------
rakoo
The WeChat-ification of FB is going forward. There is still so much to do, but
I for one am happy that total control over society's interaction by a single
company is slowly coming over to the Western world.

(For reference if you don't have wechat or alipay in China, you might as well
live as an hermit because fewer and fewer places will accomodate you)

------
sarfrazarshad
Facebook has had the shop option for quite some time now on the Facebook
pages. I have used it, it really sucked. What's new here? Checkout option? The
Instagram shop is new that's for sure. But I am not sure how that will
perform.

~~~
sarfrazarshad
Discovery was a real issue. I hope they have improved it now

------
alexashka
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.

------
rodolphoarruda
Another nail in the decentralized web coffin. The big steam machine is working
at full power.

------
bovermyer
If Facebook Shops allows you to sell digital products like PDFs, then it very
much has my attention.

~~~
type0
I really hope they don't poison that market as well.

~~~
bovermyer
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.

------
WrongThinkerNo5
I still remember that time when Zuck publicly admitted that he was aiming for
Facebook to replace the internet, which was clearly promptly scrubbed from the
internet (it is one of those regrets that I did not save the video even though
I realized it was important, while not realizing we actually had memoryholes
already). It seems more than ever that he is well on the way to doing so, as
it becomes ever less likely that any kind of relief or resolution will come
from captured regulators, let alone captured and bought off legislators.
Pretty soon, real competition will be dead, it has little life left in it as
is.

------
lykahb
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.

------
flyGuyOnTheSly
Instagram shop charges 5%+ transaction fees... (more if the product is priced
below $8) is this going to be the same pricing model?

Because if so it's a non-starter for myself and anyone comfortable with the
stripe api and/or shopify at least.

------
A4ET8a8uTh0
I 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.

~~~
scarface74
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?”

~~~
stephenr
Minority of what exactly?

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?

~~~
scarface74
[https://www.worldometers.info/world-
population/](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/)

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.

~~~
stephenr
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.

~~~
scarface74
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.

------
NicoJuicy
And using the big E-commerce platforms. Reducing opportunity for a software
developer with his own platform to connect to it, what is basically just a
product feed + order confirmation endpoint.

And more useless noice on Facebook of everyone promoting their take-away.

Ugh

Ps. I buy local, the take-aways across the street. Not the 30 places from my
old hometown.

------
AnonC
_> Creating a Facebook Shop is free and simple._

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!

~~~
chillacy
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.

~~~
AnonC
Could you suggest some reading material on this please?

------
bitL
Some time ago I was thinking what would it take to bring down Facebook and one
of the ideas was for social platform to allow direct sales for hobbyists/small
shops. They managed to patch this vulnerability now.

------
hckr_news
How can developers leverage Facebook/Insta shops for business opportunities?

------
ta17711771
FTC is asleep at the wheel, with Facebook.

Did you know they're doing dating, gamestreaming, classified ads....list goes
on longer than my patience.

------
tams
In the light of this, it's much more obvious why they stared exposing the
Facebook brand in their Instagram and WhatsApp properties.

------
milin
What does this mean for Squarespace and companies alike who strive to make
shopping experiences for small and medium businesses?

------
TYPE_FASTER
Uber buys GrubHub, Facebook creates a Facebook Shop vertical for restaurants
and food. Most places have a Facebook page anyway.

------
rbarnes01
Interesting that their preview doesn't show any stars/reviews. I wonder if
they will add this feature in the future?

------
AzzieElbab
how are those going to magically just-work without logistics and conflict
resolution?

~~~
tomcooks
(unfortunately) worked pretty well for amazon, and the concerns were the same

~~~
kevindeasis
what do you mean? isn't the logistics and conflict resolution of amazon,
pretty much best-in-class?

------
treebornfrog
This is a very smart move. Zuck proving he's the best allocator of capital in
the consumer Internet space once again.

Im not in the HN bubble so much, I did delete for a few years.

Recently installed it to get on a few silver bullion trading groups as there
is a shortage and boy are those groups super valuable for buying and selling.

------
kull
Any idea how to apply for the early access to this api?

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_448
Looks like a challenge to Amazon minus the warehouses!

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champagnepapi
Does this work for subscription based businesses?

------
_jal
A whole class of retailer that will be blocked at my router. The Balkanization
is well underway.

~~~
itsspring
My thoughts exactly. I’ve blocked Facebook in my DNS hosts file & thankfully
Firefox has a Facebook fence to isolate their trackers.

~~~
swagonomixxx
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 :)

~~~
mikestew
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.

~~~
dmix
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.

~~~
mikestew
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".

~~~
dmix
I was commenting in support of not using FB, which is supporting what you're
saying...

~~~
mikestew
Gotcha, thanks for the clarification (and the stealth edit ;-). I'd delete my
original question if it wouldn't leave your comment dangling.

------
aboringusername
To me, it seems like these tech giants want the internet to start and end with
their platforms. Facebook is becoming (or has become) people's experience of
the "internet", it has a lot of what people want.

My concern is there isn't yet a law or enforced guidelines (similar to the
GDPR) about machine learning, and what happens when it gets things wrong.

Recently, we've seen with a postcast app and pushbullet being threatened on
Google. What happens if an AI or system decides it no longer likes your shop,
or factors outside your control cause it to be flagged?

A commenter worried about MLM's, which is a valid point. Will we know the
identity of the FB user who made the shop? How does the ownership process
works? (I.E who actually "owns" the FB shop on FB and get admin controls).

I refuse to engage with and use FB, it may be that some shops become entirely
FB oriented and forget "mycoolshop.com", because FB provides all the tools a
business owner needs.

Sad, but slowly we're seeing the death of the internet we all wanted and
possibly knew for a time in the early part of the century.

------
codegladiator
Brace yourself for the tide of MLM FB shops

~~~
texascloud
What is MLM?

~~~
benmarks
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.

~~~
davidajackson
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.

~~~
moneywoes
Yikes, do you know what happened to him?

------
furtive808
Is it US only?

~~~
rnotaro
US Only and selected shops for now.

------
foobar_
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.

~~~
ancarda
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?

------
sub7
lol FB trying to fuck over 3rd party sellers and Amazon is like go ahead
chumps we've been at this for decades.

Seriously though who the hell trusts FB. Nobody. They should fold.

~~~
dylkil
>Seriously though who the hell trusts FB. Nobody.

2.6 billion monthly active users beg to differ

~~~
sub7
I'm one of them. But the graph is going down and engagement is going down
faster, hence the frantic acquisition of anything else that gains traction -
IG, WA etc.

Tiktok won't sell and their curve is convex so let's see what happens in the
next couple years.

------
youareostriches
Facebook needs to be broken up _immediately_ , and their core platform
offering replaced by an open protocol.

~~~
holler
why open protocol and not help other competitors gain market share?

------
tomcooks
Finally some honesty, good riddance to feel good nonsense about persons, being
connected and the like - it's all about the money.

------
MadafakinBATMAN
Is it just me or was that the most hippy non-value product ever? Like printing
with antique printing press seems as mumbo jumbo as gwyneth paltrow's selling
stones to me

