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Comment by spaceman_2020 | Hacker News Reader

spaceman_2020·

I'm also surprised that they haven't focused more on giving businesses tools to communicate and sell to customers better through WhatsApp and Instagram. Whatsapp is the de-facto communication tool in India and LatAm from experience. Instagram is the de-facto discovery and social tool in India.

Yet from a business' perspective, the experience is really poor. Most have to rely on third party tools to sell and chat with customers.

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Whatsapp partnered with JioMart to place orders through the app in India: https://about.fb.com/news/2022/08/shop-on-whatsapp-with-jiom...

Progress is being made on this front, albeit slowly.

FB messenger too.

They did seem to make a push for more business API and more marketing messaging permissions. I invested some time in developing it for political campaigns.

Only for them to yank the more open permissions away.

I agree with all the above. Nothing to do with the username, either.

> Whatsapp is the de-facto communication tool in India and LatAm from experience

And much of Europe.

isn't that a casualty of the US-centric/SF-centric view of the world?

Meta thinks about foreign market share constantly, it’s a primary reason why they purchased WhatsApp in the first place.

The failure to capitalize on their userbase with accessory businesses probably has more to do with the VC/Silicon Valley obsession with the hot new thing and what they hope will be the next new hot thing. Commerce is boring, TikTok and VR platforms are much more exciting.

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