Facebook Shuts Down its Live Shopping Feature

Business, Social Media

The company said in a blog post that Facebook will stop its live shopping feature on October 1 to put more attention on Reels. The company says that after this date, you won’t be able to host any new or planned live shopping events on Facebook. The social media site says that you can still use Facebook Live to broadcast live events, but you won’t be able to make product playlists or tag products in your Facebook Live videos.

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After a number of smaller trials and beta tests, Livestream video shopping became public on Facebook two years ago. The feature was made to give creators and brands an interactive way to sell items, connect with viewers, and maybe get new customers. But Facebook says it is moving away from living video shopping and putting more attention on Reels.

In the blog post, the company said, “Consumers’ viewing habits are shifting toward short-form video, so we are shifting our attention to Reels on Facebook and Instagram, Meta’s short-form video product.” “Try out Reels and Reels ads on Facebook and Instagram if you want to reach people and get them interested through video. You can also tag products in Instagram Reels to make them easier to find and think about. You can set up Live Shopping on Instagram if you have a store with checkout and want to hold Live Shopping events there.

Facebook started live shopping in 2018, and over the past two years, it has tried out different ways to make it easier to use and more popular. The company started testing “Live Shopping for Creators” in November of last year. Creators and brands were able to cross-stream on both of their pages after the launch, so they didn’t have to send users to just one page. Also, last summer, the company started “Live Shopping Fridays” to get bigger brands to try out live shopping as a medium and bring more attention to live shopping on Facebook. Brands like Abercrombie and Fitch, Bobbi Brown, Clinique, and Sephora were shown on the show.

A live shopping platform could have made Facebook a lot of money in the long run by charging selling fees at the checkout. But the news from today shows that Facebook is changing its mind about live shopping.

Facebook isn’t the only tech giant that wants to scale back its plans for live shopping. It was recently reported that TikTok has dropped plans to bring its live e-commerce “TikTok Shop” to the U.S. and more parts of Europe. Last year, the company opened its first market outside of Asia, the U.K., with TikTok Shop. This made it possible for companies and influencers to sell products through QVC-style live streams. But the business struggled to catch on with customers and had problems on the inside. The Financial Times said that the plans to grow were scrapped after influential people in the U.K. dropped out of the project.

Asia, especially China, is becoming more and more interested in Livestream shopping. But since both Facebook and TikTok are putting their live shopping plans on hold, it seems that most people outside of Asia still don’t know about or use live shopping.