Meta has announced that it will shut down the Live Shopping service from it’s social media platform Facebook. Meta wants to focus on Reels and the Meta’s short video content product on Facebook and Instagram.
“From 1 October 2022, you will no longer be able to host any new or scheduled live shopping events on Facebook,” which was posted on the business help page of Facebook.
This feature was available only for two years since its release in 2020.
Meta also stated, “As consumers’ viewing behaviours are shifting to short-form video, we are shifting our focus to Reels on Facebook and Instagram”.
This means that users will be able to use ‘Facebook Live Broadcast’ but they will not be able to create product playlists or tag products in the Facebook Live Video.
Users that want to engage their followers more in-depth with products can try tagging them in Reels on Instagram. However, Meta did not clarify if Facebook Reels will have the same feature as Instagram Reels.
Meta’s emphasis on using Reels comes due to a large investment in this format. Recently, Meta has made changes to its Instagram platform like testing full-screen Reels in Instagram’s feed, such features have generated complaints from users to which Adam Monsseri (Head of Instagram) replied in a video statement with: “I need to be honest. I do believe more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time.”.
At the beginning of the year, there was a lot of talk about the potential of Livestream shopping from Meta and even TikTok, this was based on the success of this format in China, however, both companies have decided to scale down from expanding its live shopping plans due the struggle to gain traction with consumers.
To read all the details from Facebook’s Help page > click here
Key Takeaways
- Users can still broadcast live events, but won’t be able to do ‘product tagging’.
- Product tagging in Reels will be available on Instagram; Meta did not clarify the same for Facebook Reels.
