Yeah, "nano influencer" is basically the Avon lady/Tupperware party host of this decade.
I guess because of this one might not refer to them as purely an "influencer" but more and more people I know use instagram as a primary platform for advertising skills / wares as well as a place to spend money.
If you know your audience spends time on instagram, you'd be stupid not to put resources into engaging with them on the platform.
I am not talking trash about your point. Just that you replied to a comment with not much understand of multi level marketing (pyramid schems) that the previous comment was aluding to (and the commenter didn't expand on it either). Most people in the tech business do not have much exposure to it. But the success of things like herbalife, avon, etc rest on the "marketing reach potential" of their network, not just for the direct product.
so in a way you are confirming the similarity that you thought you were denying with your comment. And the great insight here is how "influencer" is a kind of organic-multilevel-marketing scam.
Small-to-medium brands engaging with small-to-medium scale individual marketers/influencers could be quite different than traditional MLM, with way fewer intermediaries.
Is it a scam though? A pyramid scam is self-similar: you sell to people who then expect to sell to people who expect to sell to people etc.
I thought Avon, Tupperware etc. had a fixed length chains and multi-decade track records of sales to real consumers at the end of the chain.
However things like tupperware didn't seem to work that way, the product was actually mostly sold to end customers which makes it a legitimate business and not a pyramid scheme.
Yeah, I had absolutely no interest in the platform until I learned of some shoe makers communicating/selling only through it. It seems to have become a very popular showcasing platform for crafts.
Was also surprised to learn these are still a thing outside the US