Back in 2020, Facebook announced a new shopping experience for its users called “Facebook Live Shopping” so that people could shop directly from live streams on the social network. However, the company announced on Wednesday that Facebook Live Shopping is being discontinued.
As detailed by the company in a blog post, Facebook Live Shopping will be completely shut down as of October 1, 2022. From that date on, users will no longer be able to host any Live Shopping events on Facebook. Of course, Facebook Live will still be available for users, but without options to create and sell products during live broadcasts.
Facebook claims that consumer behavior has been changing, as most users of the social network seem to prefer short-format videos. This is why the company will now focus even more on Instagram Reels, which also has a similar option to let users tag products in a video.
Interestingly, Facebook is not the only platform that is abandoning live shopping experiences. Just a month ago, TikTok announced that it would no longer bring TikTok Live Shopping to the US after disappointing results with the feature in the UK. In China, TikTok’s home market, Live Shopping has become quite popular and lucrative, but the feature has never proved appealing with Western users.
According to internal TikTok reports, overall adoption of the Live Shopping feature was still “low and nascent,” which resulted in poor sales despite subsidies and cash incentives to encourage brands and influencers to use the platform. Facebook could be facing a similar situation with its own feature.
Last week, Meta (Mark Zuckerberg’s company that owns Facebook) reported its first-ever quarterly revenue drop. According to Wall Street analysts, competition with TikTok and Apple’s privacy guidelines have become a major challenge for the company.
