Comment by dofm
8 days ago
You can always hypothesise success without Facebook because if it didn't exist, people would find alternatives.
But it does exist, and in any town or city there are dozens of people running microbusinesses in competitive niches that rely on word of mouth and recommendation which is largely sustained through Facebook comments, "I'll message you!" and tagging in posts and photos.
Anyone in hustle culture — odd job/handymen, mobile hairdressers/beauticians/nail technicians, day workers, gardeners, plumbers, event photographers; Facebook is unfortunately crucial to keeping the doors open.
All of these people could have websites, but people don't browse websites. They could run ads in newspapers, but people don't look at those. And google is dead for stuff like this, listings and trade directories are not much good either.
At the lowest level of freelance income, Facebook is basically indispensible because it is the only social network with a regional basis and solid local group mechanisms, and because your both your customers and competitors are there. It probably sustains tens of millions of such workers.
This is where the tension lies. For sure I wish Facebook would shrink and that the web was healthier and people would understand the damage it can do, but "just don't use it" is not advice that works for millions of people.
It is Facebook that needs to change, through slow attrition of engagement with bait content and scam ads.
No Hypothesis needed. I lived it. I have at various points made a living with various combinations of PC repair, electronics recycling, museum displays, day labor, retail, trucking, telemarketing, street and restaurant entertainment, food service, mailroom work, vending machines, factory assembly lines, craft sales, construction, home AV, and I have probably forgotten a few. And those are just the low-tech gigs.
I called people, met people in person, sought out classified ads, made sure I was in the right parking lot at the right time to run into the right people.
I hustled to survive for most of my life, and I sure as hell did not need Zucks help to do it. In fact my web design clients were mostly small businesses that wanted to host their own websites to get them SEO and visibility that Facebook pages could not offer.
Again, everyone loves to make excuses for their dependence. I prefer independence.
And things have changed.
People don't answer cold calls! They increasingly don't read emails. There are no classified ads worth a damn. They work from home! They ask AI more than they google.
The remaining stuff is on Facebook.
It is pointless arguing people shouldn't look to Facebook to find these kinds of jobs and get those recommendations, and preaching the morality of independence to, say, a gel nail technician who makes all her money from friends recommending her and social media photos of her work, is nonsense.
I hope you're not the guy who tell people who are on the breadline that Facebook is bad and they should use classified ads. Because that guy sounds old and out of touch.
It doesn't matter what we think of Facebook (and instagram, and to a smaller extent other social media); it is crucial to networking.
I did all those jobs when Facebook usage was at its peak. It is not crucial to networking, and engagement is plummeting in these walled gardens as content is mostly ragebait, spam, and scams now.
I know the breadline well. Worked my way up from living in my car and eating out of trash cans. I do not personally know anyone who has come up from a lower place than me, and my advice remains constant because people are still the same even as technology evolves.
You can network at meetups, giving talks, trade shows, workshops, classes. Nothing converts higher than meeting people in person. That was true 20 years ago and may be even more true 20 years from now as human generated content on the internet drops to near zero.
Never build a business on hoping an algorithm someone else controls is nice to you.