The Live Shopping Feature Fab: Can it Keep up with alternatives?

Facebook introduced the live shop feature back in 2018, and it saw a pretty steep decline over the last year after the pandemic was over.

The feature enabled users to run live facebook ad related events that were broadcasted as a live streaming event on someones page allowing the user to showcase some of their products, features, or services online to the world at a glance while also directly linking those products to those that were watching.

It beat the commercial or paid ad service algorithm because it worked almost in a way that tiktok has its scroll feature. Everything was at a swipe of a consumers fingers and new products were featured everyday so it seemed like a great experience on paper.

However, Facebook seems to have recently underestimated its market. In October of this year, Facebook plans to shut the curtain on this once intuitive idea.

This is probably due in fact because to the steep decline in viewer base and retention that is lacking from live shopping. It may have been a viable option during the pandemic when people had money to spend without being able to go places, but now that it's over the need to shop out of necessity and boredom has ceased to exist.

But does this mean Live shopping isnt going to work at all? We beg to differ. Live Shopping is actually still going on TikTok, it may not be as effective or working with the same features as Facebook has implemented, but we gotta take into fact that the average demographic for Facebook users is very different from TikTok.

If Youtube even, for example, were to create their own method of Live shopping whose to say it wont work. The average user on Facebook is completely different from the average user on other platforms like Youtube, TikTok, or even twitter who is also implementing more commercial features for businesses over the years.

We suggest that the best course of action would be to invest in research into these markets. Learn about platforms and your ideal graphic to figure out if Live shopping could be a viable solution to getting your name or product out there.