December 21, 2020

It has been clear that Instagram really really tried to integrate shopping capability onto their platform. It has done something - as an in-app webpage (meaning still the purchase is not done on Instagram itself)

While they are struggling, TikTok, teams up with Walmart just created similar way of social-media-commerce (article link: https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/17/walmart-to-pilot-test-live-streamed-video-shopping-on-tiktok/?utm_source=morning_brew)

It is inevitable that Social Media platforms are trying to find out a new way to bring in profits (probably through incorporated payment systems with fees) - essentially, commerce is the best place to make money, especially if you have such a gigantic database of users

• you can provide recommendation, targeting, or any other types of user related data analytics to either sell something or provide solutions to other businesses (its both B2C and B2B altogether solution)

Click the Tweet below and check out the actual checkout process (yes, it rhymes) video - which is just like Instagram, but with Walmart

https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak/status/1340113761051488256?s=20

August 31, 2020

Finally!!! Instagram launched its online shopping platform (not sure when, but must be really really recent)

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/20917e03-7c72-46c6-a076-107839a1e898/IMG_4159.mp4

It really blends a customer's journey of Social media and shopping into interesting combination.

• What you save as a post saving, now can be in your wishlist for shopping → And you can see them all at once from single button looks like below!

Unlike other platforms like google that only try to provide services for shopping (like google payments, advertisement, and more..?), Instagram (and FB) directly launched the shopping platform within their platform.

• Some caveats are that the payment system is still not linked and it still redirects to individual brand's website rather than staying inside the Instagram (as a in-app browser style)

Wonder how far Instagram will reach. It is now highly overlapping with Shopify and other e-commerce platforms in several aspects, yet taking a huge advantage on the marketing portion (Facebook business ads)