Comment by quanticle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by quanticle | Hacker News Reader

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I think the headline does a poor job of capturing the content of the article. The real story here is summed up by the graph that shows Myanmar's cell phone penetration going from 12.8% to 60.7% in the span of two years. That's just insane, even taking into account how fast cell phones have spread in other countries.

Of course, Facebook is well positioned to take advantage of this, given that it is well adapted to mobile. But so are others, and there's no reason to think that Facebook's monopoly will be permanent. Facebook has the advantage of being the first entrant in an entirely new market, and they have the branding muscle and name recognition to enforce a temporary monopoly. Long term, though (as the article itself acknowledges by pointing to the prevalence of Viber), there is no reason to believe that Facebook's will have a sustainable monopoly over Burmese cell phone users. If something else comes along that handles the use cases that Facebook does, but even better, then people will switch to that.

I am a Burmese(Myanmar) guy living in the country. I could say that majority of the people use Facebook when they use the Internet. One of the thing that has been bothering me is that Facebook is cooperating with one of the local telco (Telenor) and did a program called Facebook zero[0] where the users of the aforementioned telco can use the Facebook freely. It is good and bad, I would say. Users would love it, no doubt but I don't want to see that Facebook is dominating the market and there won't be any other advantages to others, even to local startups.

[0] : https://www.telenor.com.mm/pages/facebook-zero/164

Yes. Facebook has been trying to get telcos to foist this on us Indians as well. It has kinda blown up into a big debate about net neutrality in the country. Here is the latest hn article on it : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10931750

There has been a lot of noise about this same service in several other developing countries. A few have banned it so far. It will be interesting to see how the situation in Burma develops. If Facebook ends up completely dominating the market in the long term, it will be strong evidence that zero-rating is harmful to the web.

Hey, it's awesome to get the view of someone who's there and experiencing all these changes on a day-to-day basis.

Leaving Facebook aside for a moment, can you perhaps elaborate on how daily life has changed, now that cell phones have gone from something solely reserved for the elite to a commodity that pretty much everyone can access, if not own?

I watched a recently-made documentary the other day about a village in Laos and the dynamic of tourists going there because it was still 'authentic' and the village rapidly modernizing (electricity, tour guides, etc.).

Two scenes stood out to me. The first was of a young, city-educated shop owner who had a laptop and internet. Some of the other villagers came over as he showed them pictures of 'nice ladies' and played music for them. Ever the businessman he offered to download ten tracks for them in exchange for some meat.

The other scene was a merchant passing through and selling plastic bowls and such, but also 'dumb' cellphones. Cue a scene of three guys excitedly comparing ringtones.

What amazed me was not just the rapid technological progress in this village, but how different individuals made extremely different jumps. One guy was excited about phones with fancy ringtones, but the other, in that same small village was already 'facebooking' with a Chinese girl on his laptop.

What strikes me is that the way 'we' think about something like facebook is very different from this villager (and I suppose the other villagers in due time).

For many of us, Facebook is a product that developed over time and one that exists in an ecosystem of social platforms and has a dynamic with its users. We remember older, often national social networks, fondly or otherwise, we discuss the pro's and cons of current social networks, we have already invested time and content into these social networks, and these products have shaped us and vice versa.

But for places like this village, Facebook is a brand-new thing that just appeared with no history or context. They might have no knowledge at all of how Facebook 'should' be used (although I suspect this knowledge travels quickly). Hell, even many of those who grew up with Facebook have that one older family member who somehow thinks each of your posts is meant for them and they respond and like them all!

It's a bit like the difference between dating someone you grew up with and a 'mail-order bride (groom?)' from a different culture. The dynamic is entirely different, and I find this fascinating. I wonder if any research is being done into this.

I guess this is all just a really long-winded way of basically repeating what you said. But it's early and I'm having a coffee and I don't want to start working yet... Apologies!

Laos is an interesting place, I've only been in Vientiane (the capital).

It is a really (really!) small place, really nothing modern anywhere and dusty. But apparently cars are cheap, so it is chock full of fresh looking big cars (like SUVs).

I also saw a tesla there, apparently the owner owned some business and had it imported.

In Vientiane there are casinos, lots of NGO money and cash from dodgy-to-outright-illicit mining and forestry concessions, dams, lots of new Chinese investment, etc. It's a shame because 10-15 years ago it was the most lovely sleepy little Indochinese city you could imagine, still with a strong hint of the French. Certainly, that charm is no longer. But it still has something on Thailand, and it's small and friendly enough you can meet half the town in a few weeks.

When I was there the roads were almost devoid of cars. They've also just opened their first ATM. Things can change a lot in 10 years. :)

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