Small businesses operated either individually or by less than 10 people. A bunch of customers buy products/services from these businesses. So they need a better way to:

Engage with their customers

Sell and manage product/service deliveries

Target specific customer audience

Show products/services availability

Whatsapp could be the right solution not facebook apps.

Also a combination of Yelp and Facebook/Whatsapp could lead replacing small business websites(I'm not telling that no smb website should exist) that going to make a fortune. The platform needs to accomplish these three things :

The ability to list core info like contact details, hours of operation, and service offerings in a minimalist fashion.

The ability to solicit feedback (not ratings) from customers in a low-friction, high-upside way.

An ad system that let's a 60 year-old luddite set up a campaign in less than 3 minutes without having to call anyone.

There's a lot to tell but I'll leave you with these thoughts.

I have always thought about what it would take for Whatsapp to lose their place as the dominant chat app and you finally nailed it. If I ever start getting ads or requests for reviews or anything remotely related to someone selling something to me, as a personal message because of automated Facebook tools, I'd get myself and everyone I know off the platform in a matter of seconds.

On the other hand, for information requests they already have Whatsapp for businesses and it works fine, several luddites I know use it.

> I have always thought about what it would take for Whatsapp to lose their place as the dominant chat app and you finally nailed it.

Unfortunately, that's not how these things work. I don't know of any mainstream platform that died because of ads.

You have to keep in mind the fact that the average person on this site has a total different attitude to technology and its warts than most other people.

Tangentially, I know they mentioned the "adpocolypse" for YouTube but recently it's insane the amount of adverts being shown. It's really putting me off using it.

But as you say, mainstream platforms with no competitors seem to get away with it.

Why not just use an adblocker?

Harder to do in the youtube app. You need a pihole server.