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Comment by tagabek | Hacker News Reader

I am curious as to why no one has built a web/mobile app to make this easier for the sellers.

My read on this is that the software doesn't matter very much, it's the network. Everyone's on instagram, and so you may as well sell on it. My guess (correct me if I'm wrong) is that Kuwait is very cash based for this stuff, and so things like credit card processing don't matter. If that's the case a picture stream is a pretty good approximation of a store's 'inventory,' and the slight benefit of making this software fit the needs of the seller better would be far outweighed by the fact that they would lose the buyer network.

> Kuwait is very cash based for this stuff

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.

These are some very enlightening points.

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.

We have!! It's called Bondsy and it's totally free.

I posted about it here a few minutes ago but I got downvoted badly. No idea why.

I actually did. It's called fashion.gram (fashiongram.de) and it allows users to easily shop popular fashion content from IG.

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