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| WhatsApp discontinuation puts an end to the entire informal business economy |
On October 4th, all Facebook services stopped working for six hours. The ban includes the Facebook platform itself, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram. Although users lost the ability to communicate and be entertained, others lost some of their income and livelihood.
It happened in Brazil. Luisa Ferreira, who provides housecleaning services, was unable to contact her client to confirm the reservation for the daily working hours as WhatsApp was closed for six hours.
Since Brazil is completely dependent on the services of Facebook and WhatsApp for communication, Ferreira and thousands of others rely on the application to communicate with customers and organize their work with them. Mainly because the companies that provide telecom services in the country do not offer the competitive advantage that drives citizens to rely on SMS.
Lisa told The Verge that she stated that due to the customer's prior agreement with him, the order hold prevented her from making appointments with the customer over the next two days. So I lost two whole days of income. He also described the incident as "an irreparable or compensable loss of income".
It tries to communicate with customers via SMS, but faces the problem of high costs on the one hand and the problem of lack of response from customers on the other, as the application is mainly dependent on the application.
The impact of WhatsApp on informal business
Brazilian citizens mainly rely on WhatsApp. and public services for Facebook. Because nearly 60% of citizens have active accounts for these two services. Hence, Ferreira is not the only person affected by this incident.
Professor Rafael Grohmann noted that Brazil lacks an attractive infrastructure for traditional telecom services. It motivates users to trust the free services.
Employees informally rely on WhatsApp to coordinate their work and avoid using specialized platforms. Because the platform, which connects service providers and their buyers, reduces employee income by up to 20%. Therefore, both sides rely on informal communication via WhatsApp.
When the power went out, Bruno Torres, a seller of children's clothing, was deeply affected. He estimated that in the wake of the power outage, he lost $500 as he relied on WhatsApp to send offers to customers and provide them with new clothes.
Because of the power outages, customers started calling business phone numbers, and Torres received dozens of calls at the same time that he couldn't answer. For Torres, WhatsApp is a free tool to increase profits when communicating with customers.
WhatsApp plays an important role for employees who cannot read or write because they rely on voice messages to communicate with customers instead of text messages. Perhaps Brazilian citizens, especially workers, can turn to assistive methods in an emergency.