Facebook Empowers Small Business

Facebook has been getting a fair amount of bad press lately. I think the media like to paint them as the bad guys because everyone knows the platform and they are successful, the perfect combination for a villain. As Paul points out above, the group has close to 3 billion users, and the vast majority have a great experience on the platform. Zuckerberg has repeatedly stated that if people were not enjoying themselves, the company would be dead in a few years.

Facebook is the lifeblood of many small businesses. My wife started a functional children's furniture business during lockdown called Studio Doodle. The business would not exist without Instagram. Once she was done selling to friends and family, all new customers came from people seeing Instagram posts, both paid and unpaid.

Not just small local brands rely on Instagram. In this New York Times article, Instagram: A Watch Brand's Best Friend, they note that many boutique Swiss watch brands have been pulled from obscurity thanks to Instagram. An over-engineered picture on a billboard somewhere doesn't have the same effect as seeing a real person wearing the watch, while living their best life.

The article also reports how Breitling took things one step further, creating an advisory board of Instagram influencers. This team meets once a year as a sounding board for new products.

As a Facebook shareholder, you can feel good knowing that you own an organisation that is a massive enabler of small businesses.