TikTok pushes forward on shopping, while Instagram retreats
As Retail Leader previously reported, TikTok, owned by the China-based ByteDance, has already had shopping functionality in the U.K. and in Southeast Asia. It first became apparent that TikTok had e-commerce ambitions in the U.S. in October when the social-media company posted job listings for positions at a fulfillment facility.
The move comes as Instagram, which has in the past several years focused on video to compete with rapidly growing TikTok, is pulling back on shopping features it introduced just a few years ago. Instagram in January announced that it’d boot the shopping tab from the in-app home feed, as commerce became less of a priority for the Meta-owned platform.
Now, Instagram is pulling back even further and will eliminate live shopping features next month. According to a post on Instagram’s website, the social-media app will sunset the ability for users to tag products in live broadcasts on March 16. The feature was initially rolled out in 2020. Instagram said it’s not eliminating shopping from the platform entirely, and still plans to support commerce “for people and businesses across feed, stories, Reels, ads and more.”
Social commerce has been increasingly popular in Asian markets, but it hasn’t necessarily caught on in the U.S., especially as consumers have returned to brick-and-mortar shopping. According to data from Insider Intelligence, social commerce was expected to make up just 5% of e-commerce sales in the U.S. last year compared to 16% of the total e-commerce business in China.