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Comment by galangalalgol | Hacker News Reader

I keep running into this in the US in large cities. Really well regarded restaurants or music venues do everything through FB and insta. I don't have either of those apps, and I don't remember my passwords from a decade ago. Isn't there a service somewhere, where you give someone some pictures of your food, and restaurant, and you get a container and credentials for a webpage that handles reservations, takes pickup or delivery orders, and lets you update the menu? Why do people do this?

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Because Facebook is simple. Any one can update it, and it doesn't go down, and it doesn't cost anything.

I've many times seen web presences fail for small organizations, when the only person that understands the web set up leaves. With Facebook, that doesn't happen.

I'm sure there are services such as you describe, and probably many restaurants use them, and it's not obvious. But Facebook is the default.

No, because facebook is free and they are cozy with the mexican government and this allows them to operate in a country without net neutrality. Therefore facebook, whatsapp and instagram are included for free in most if not all cellphone plans and pay per month options.

Yeah, sadly. Tbh, if you don't have a separate page for your establishment, then you are a joke. Facebook pages are just horrible.

I've seen that too. Or when the framework chosen goes away. If the person at a small restaurant or non profit who understood the page goes away you can at least find someone to come up to speed. But sometimes it relies on stuff that just isn't there anymore and you have to start over. I'm not in web dev, or whatever its called, but is there some technology in the space that is the equivalent ofba T-shirt and blue jeans, or a charcoal suit, that will be fine for a couple decades with only informational updates?

WordPress is my first thought.

You have to constantly install updates for it to stay secure, then every second update your theme breaks, you find out it's not updated for the new version and have to redesign the whole page.

I guess he's referring to WordPress.com which means no updates needed...at least for simple sites

I've made excellent experiences with GravCMS across 5 different websites since 2015.

It is a failure of our industry that this is the best option for a lot of small businesses.

I’ve wondered this too. I don’t know any young people (at least nobody my kids’ ages between 17 and 26) who use Facebook. It seems like they might be missing a large part of their target audience.

> Why do people do this?

Others have pointed out the simplicity of it. Just use an existing platform, doesn't take much IT skill at all.

The other answer is that this is where the people are. Why waste time building your own website when only those searching you will visit it? Interacting with the various social media platforms instead gives you far more options on discoverability.

If you must maintain a presence on those platforms anyways, it becomes even less compelling for a small non-tech company to maintain their own infrastructure.

In the UK we have OpenTable which does exactly that very well

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