News hardware Facebook sacrifices a feature that was making it money and goes all out on Instagram
Widely used in some countries, especially in the United States, the Facebook Live Shopping service only has a few months of existence ahead of it. Meta has just announced its upcoming closure.
Do you know Facebook Live Shopping ? This is’a service launched in 2020 by the social network: it allows brands and influencers to present products during live video broadcasts, and to associate links making it easy to buy the items in question.
A feature that has its followers, but, very soon, they will no longer be able to benefit from it. Indeed, by the voice of a press release, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, well to announce that Facebook Live Shopping will soon no longer exist. “As of October 1, 2022, you will no longer be able to host new or scheduled live shopping events on Facebook. You will still be able to use Facebook Live to broadcast live events, but you will not be able to create product playlists or tag products in your Facebook Live videos”can we read there.
This does not mean that brands and influencers will not have other possibilities to offer their products to their audiences. Because this closure, which occurs quite soon after the launch of the service, mainly reflects the decline of Facebook against other platforms.
Facebook Live Shopping
“As consumer viewing behavior shifts to short video, we are focusing on Reels on Facebook and Instagram, Meta’s short video product”, adds the press release from the firm. A strategy that makes sense, even if it does not always go over very well with the public: Instagram’s recent setbackswhich now tends to favor video to the detriment of photography, prove it.
Meta encourages people who are still using Facebook Live Shopping to turn to Instagram to continue their activities. This platform allows, and will still allow in October, to organize Live Shopping events and to integrate links to buy products within videos, including in the Reels.
Live Shopping on Instagram
In this context, it is quite possible to consider that Facebook Live Shopping continues to bring money to Metabut that the company seeks to centralize video activity as much as possible on Instagram, where the audience is stronger. There’s nothing like hitting influencers and brands in the wallet to encourage them to switch platforms to continue promoting their products.
Compete with TikTok, yes, but…
With Instagram, Meta seeks to compete with TikTok. An approach assumed by Instagram and by its boss, Adam Mosseri. If it is not unanimous with the public, it is likely that it will still be profitable. It is, however, interesting to note that TikTok has, for its part, revised its ambitions downward regarding Live Shopping. The platform decided to cancel the rollout of this feature in Europe as well as in the United States at the beginning of July. Enough to leave the field open to Instagram, which will however have to demonstrate that this proposal can succeed where its main competitor has failed.
