Comment by saadalem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by saadalem | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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.

> 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.

Personally I would argue that regular TV has largely died both because better alternatives have come along but also because of ads. Last time I tried watching a movie on the telly, there were nearly more ads than actual content. That alone may not have been the reason for younger generations migrating away from it, but I'm sure it played a big part.

My understanding (from a comment I heard on GCN) is that Strava expanding their subscription model (vs transitioning to an ad-based model) is in part due to their fear of losing users due to ads. But then again, cyclists that use Strava probably have the same attitudes toward technology as HN readers (myself included).

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.

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

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)

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.

Ad block also gives zero ads on YouTube.

... Without compensating content creators. So unless you want ads baked into videos then premium is the way to go.

Someone should build an ad blocker that still registers that you've watched the ad, so that content creators get paid (someone correct me if this is what's already happening).

If they do both they can repeat Cable! Win win!

Why not just use an adblocker?

Harder to do in the youtube app. You need a pihole server.

NewPipe blocks Youtube ads on mobile https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe

XDA Dev team released an Android app called "YouTube Vanced" that is an ad-blocked YouTube app that you sideload (plus a couple of other minor changes like additional themes)

I have one of those but I can't seem to block them effectively. I think the advert URLs are not specific to adverts, ie they're the same as normal YouTube videos.

Any tips??

On Android there are third-party apps that are not available on Market but are very popular.

Most wrap YT's website, add an Adblocker, and block certain APIs that prevent Picture-in-Picture, background playback, etc.

The small downside is that these apps can't use play services and thus you can't login to leave likes, comments, etc. Though you can use "Share" to open the same video in browser where you can login normally.

Google creates a shadow profile for you in that 3rd-party app, and after a few videos you watch the quickly associate you with your other profiles / shadow profiles. So, in a matter of hours or days YouTube will start recommend you content tailored to you, even though you are not logged it.

Works remarkably well.

Thanks! Do you have the name of one of these popular YouTube alternative apps? I don't want to download SpyWareYouTube.APK

ICQ?

> I don't know of any mainstream platform that died because of ads.

* Traditional television.

* Online websites of traditional newspapers - they wouldn’t have moved to paywalling if advertising was working.

* MySpace (not directly, but a contributory factor).

Traditional TV died? Not in the countries I've visited recently, as far as I know this may be a US-only thing.

> they wouldn’t have moved to paywalling if advertising was working

they surely make something on advertising because the ads are present even behind the paywalls.

I subscribe to the NYT - and I don’t like the fact there’s ads behind the paywall either - but at least they’re static ads for boring things like ING Bank. Comparing that to my local TV news’ website with Adblock disabled is night-and-day: auto-playing video ads embedded in content, clickbait “one weird trick”-ads, and no end of Share buttons either.

When we were in Vietnam we organised all of our transport over WhatsApp, except for the billing which we then had to go to a (it felt sketchy, but probably wasn't) online payment form.

If that had been baked into the conversations it would have been one of the best customer experiences we could have hoped for. Appreciate feature creep would then be a concern, but depending on how they could limit it, it could be absolutely fantastic.

(We then also got "personalised" follow up messages asking us to review, which is somewhat inevitable - but that had to be done on a case by case basis. I agree, we could only put with with a small amount of automation before things turn south quickly).

This is a great post. But the biggest opportunity here is to build an aggregate SMB platform to take on Amazon. In my local downtown, I see a ton of mom and pop stores, but they don’t get a ton of foot traffic. I sometimes imagine unlocking their inventory that can allow for some inherent advantages like same day pick-up and supporting local businesses

I’ve had similar thoughts.

If I could find out who has what in stock and at what price before I leave the house and if I could reserve it, it would definitely encourage me to shop locally more.

I’m put off by the thought of a wasted trip. The suggestion of “we could order that in for you” is obviously not great either when I can probably order it in faster myself.

I hardly ever browse in a real shop anymore because I feel like I’m waisting their time if I don’t buy something.

What about calling them?

I thought I heard about Shopify doing something like this, an aggregator for stores using Shopify, but apparently I misremembered.

As someone who works with such a small business the main problem is finding customers who are a good match as you say.

But if you fix it for everyone, then you're back to a crowded market and it'll be hard to stand out yet again. Instead of SEO and marketing you will optimise to whatever helps on the new platform.

Sometimes it feels very much like a Red Queen's race [0].

I also hate the current ad systems since they can be overwhelming, however, they are fairly easy to use. What is not so easy is avoiding blowing your whole budget because you don't know what you're doing with fine grained targeting. This is not because the systems are bad per se - it's that someone else will come along, target more efficiently than you, and will indirectly bid up keywords etc so that you are no longer making a good ROI on your own ads but they still can. So it's catch up or get out.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_race

you remember correctly: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200428005278/en/Sho...

Good post. I really think a lot of people here either haven't run a small/medium business or are woefully out of touch with the needs of the people that run these kinds of businesses.

Your post helps ground and frame the discussion appropriately.

This sounds great in theory, but eventually there will be many businesses paying for the top spot and a standard listing will become irrelevant.

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