The direct shopping feature, which allows content creators on Facebook to sell products through the social network, will no longer be available to all users from October 1st of this year, in order to focus more efforts on the development of Reels on the platform.

“As consumer behavior shifts toward short-form video, we’re focusing on Reels on Facebook and Instagram, Meta’s short-form video product,” and while Facebook Live Shopping will be discontinued, Live Shopping will be there, the statement said. Will still be available on Instagram.

“If users have a store and want to host live shopping events, they can set up this feature on Instagram,” says Meta.

The end of the live shopping service makes it clear that Facebook is going to work on improving the short-form video feature and encourage its users to interact more with this type of content to promote its products. Meta also indicates that products can be tagged on Instagram Reels to help with product exposure.

Live Shopping was first introduced in Thailand in 2018 as an opportunity for content creators on Facebook to generate revenue by selling their products from their own stores or other stores.

Live Shopping launched as a more widespread feature two years later in 2020, and while it’s still popular in some countries like China, it’s not seen in other territories. Even TikTok, Meta’s social media competitor, has gone so far as to cancel direct purchases in major markets such as the United States and Europe.

Similar to TikTok

Meta made the decision to make Instagram’s algorithm more and more similar to that of another popular social network, TikTok. This strategy, which has caused a wave of criticism against the company and the main characters of which were the Kardashians, is going to spread on Facebook.

Even Facebook has floated the idea of ​​making its algorithm more like TikTok, which Meta has already done on Instagram and which has sparked a wave of criticism of the company, led by the Kardashians. Like Facebook, Instagram has pushed user engagement hard with short-form content. An example of this is that videos on the platform have become Reels.

The emphasis on promoting the use of Reels as the main video format on Instagram caused concern among users, who called for the decision to be reversed. After Instagram CEO Adam Moseri announced that the platform would focus on video, Instagram has rolled back some of the changes it made to date.

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