3 ms·

The vast majority of web sites on the internet today don't need much infrastructure, they're low traffic blogs, web sites for the hair salon down the street, or

The vast majority of web sites on the internet today don't need much infrastructure, they're low traffic blogs, web sites for the hair salon down the street, or a landing page for a non software corporation. Facebook fills this role for a lot users, and they in turn sacrifice their data and privacy to a souless corporation. Don't forget the $billions dollars industry of shared hosting providers out there. A lot of businesses still pay $10 a month for a shared server, mysql, and php. Why should this be the case? Why should it cost anything to have an online presence today? Why shouldn't users own their data? In my personal opinion, these types of FAAS (function as a service) and mBAAS (mobile Backend as a service) the article is talking are an enabling technology in this regard.

jeswin 10y ago
Even if it costs nothing, Facebook is a far better option for hair salons and other similar small businesses. Facebook drives engagement and views, while nobody will bother with a self hosted website. The oft repeated lesson here is that convenience trumps privacy for the vast majority of users. If you look at the last decade, in spite of there being robust, self-hosted solutions for syndication and engagement such as RSS, pingbacks, OPML etc, in the end closed systems won. Maybe there is a secret ingredient to making it work again, but we don't know what that is. Yet.
- marktangotango 10y ago
  I think the secret sauce may be in things like 'call ahead seating' or 'get in line, online' that some restaurants and hair styling places do now. You don't typical get that capability on facebook, and it's a differentiator.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Thing is, why would a hair salon (which presumably has no advanced technical skills) choose to write or purchase software to run on their FaaS service, instead of simply registering an account on a SaaS service that takes care of everything for them, and even integrates with FB?
icebraining 10y ago
FAAS and mBAAS still cost resources, so they still cost money, and someone has to pay for that. If you're hosting a low traffic, mostly static site, I think you're better off paying $18/y on NearlyFreeSpeech (for a dynamic site with a database), where you are actually a client, than relying on the freemium plan from a cloud service for which you are just a prospect.

jeswin 10y ago

Even if it costs nothing, Facebook is a far better option for hair salons and other similar small businesses. Facebook drives engagement and views, while nobody will bother with a self hosted website. The oft repeated lesson here is that convenience trumps privacy for the vast majority of users. If you look at the last decade, in spite of there being robust, self-hosted solutions for syndication and engagement such as RSS, pingbacks, OPML etc, in the end closed systems won. Maybe there is a secret ingredient to making it work again, but we don't know what that is. Yet.

marktangotango 10y ago
I think the secret sauce may be in things like 'call ahead seating' or 'get in line, online' that some restaurants and hair styling places do now. You don't typical get that capability on facebook, and it's a differentiator.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Thing is, why would a hair salon (which presumably has no advanced technical skills) choose to write or purchase software to run on their FaaS service, instead of simply registering an account on a SaaS service that takes care of everything for them, and even integrates with FB?

icebraining 10y ago

FAAS and mBAAS still cost resources, so they still cost money, and someone has to pay for that. If you're hosting a low traffic, mostly static site, I think you're better off paying $18/y on NearlyFreeSpeech (for a dynamic site with a database), where you are actually a client, than relying on the freemium plan from a cloud service for which you are just a prospect.