In Kuwait, Instagram Accounts Are Big Business
theatlanticwire.com
theatlanticwire.com
PS. He shared his profile from my app on his Instagram profile and our app immediately shot up to the top 10 apps in the Kuwait app store, and number 2 in photo and video. Users thanked him, and thanked Allah that he had shown them this new app.
Most of the stuff that is sold is relatively cheap (< 15$), but trust is still a big problem. In my time there, I always wondered if it would be worthwhile for Facebook to facilitate this by for instance handling the payments, but I don't even know if they knew about this kind of stuff happening.
Anti-fraud for e-Commerce is a long way to go. Most people still transfer money via bank using SMS (and they take screenshot of their cellphone for proofs to the seller).
Twitter, Instagram, Line, BBM, WhatsApp, and Facebook are being used for eCommerce.
Most of their customers won't mind if they were "tagged" (in Facebook) by sellers while westerners would complain like there's no tomorrow (and unfriended their friends if the sellers were their friends).
I'm just in awe to see how SE Asia countries are using social media.
PayPal, etsy, and eBay is like a disease over there. No one wants to deal with third party eCommerce platform. I don't know whether it is because of the cost or other things.
What I know is you can not scale verification of bank transfers once it reaches a certain number.
Check it out, it's free.
Bondsy is a mobile app that lets you post beautiful pictures with captions like Instagram. Except that Bondsy is designed specifically for trading and selling stuff, and that lets us help out sellers a lot more than Instagram.
In my Americentric preconceived assumption I thought it would be about selling Instagram accounts, not using them as storefronts.
Compare that to something like shopify, it's a much simpler product, maybe an e-commerce idea can be taken from this..
I have seen such ad-hoc marketplaces for the middle east and south asia on other social networks being used to sell anything form used furniture, imported goods, or as boutique store fronts. There are even intercity ride share groups.
also, there is no personal income tax or vat, so they can legally post whatever at any time and any quantity and put 100% of cash straight into the pocket - no need to formalize those transactions, no IRS hunting your instagramic wealth.
One of the things that I love most about software is how it might end up being used completely different than originally intended. When Kevin Systrom and his team started building Instagram, I bet that they didn't intend to provide a makeshift online marketplace for the people of Kuwait.
I posted about it here a few minutes ago but I got downvoted badly. No idea why.