Instagram is killing its livestream shopping business. This was made known in an announcement on Tuesday by Meta, the parent company of Instagram. Starting from March 16, you will no longer have access to tag products while going live. This effectively brings to an end a feature that has largely been available to creators and US businesses in the last two years.
While the feature may not be as successful as expected in the US market, the same cannot be said of its popularity in the Asian markets.
In its place, Meta said it will now continue to focus more on advertising as one of the main ways people discover businesses and shop on Instagram. According to TechCrunch, the focus will be on use of Meta’s automated tools like Shop ads and Advantage+ shopping campaigns targeted at helping to improve ad performance. Meta, according to TechCrunch, will also continue to invest in checkout, where people can purchase a product in just a couple of taps from Instagram and Facebook Stories, Feed, or Reels.
This decision is coming a couple of months after Meta also announced that live shopping on Facebook was shutting down. The reason of course, was low patronage, which is also the reason Instagram is doing the same with live shopping.
“As consumers’ viewing behaviours are shifting to short-form video, we are shifting our focus to Reels on Facebook and Instagram, Meta’s short-form video product.”
The social media giant encourages its users to use Reels, which probably offers something similar.
On Reels, Meta announced in 2022 that it will be converting all your videos that are shorter than 15 seconds in length to Reels. This will not affect previously uploaded videos [videos posted before the update will not be affected] on the platform. This change is part of Instagram’s efforts to deliver a more immersive and full-screen experience, the company explains.
For a user whose account is public, any video posted that ends up as Reel, can be discovered and used by anyone, while the audio can be used to create their own Reel. If however, your account is set to private, your Reel will only be visible to your followers only.
Once you post a Reel, anyone can create a Remix with your Reel if your account is public. That said, you can prevent anyone from remixing your Reels in your account settings.
