Facebook has announced to shut its live shopping feature from October 1 and focus on the short-form video platform Reels on its main app and Instagram. The users will still be able to use Facebook Live to broadcast live events, but they won’t be able to create product playlists or tag products in their Facebook Live videos. “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 company said in a statement late on Wednesday. Live shopping feature let creators broadcast and sell products to an audience.
“If you want to reach and engage people through video, try experimenting with Reels and Reels ads on Facebook and Instagram,” said the company. You can also tag products in Reels on Instagram to enable deeper discovery and consideration. Facebook said that those who have a shop with checkout and want to host live shopping events on Instagram, they can set up live shopping on Instagram. “If you want to preserve a previously live video, you can download your video on your Page or in Creator Studio,” the company added. The live feature was first rolled out in 2018 in Thailand. Meta has crossed $1 billion annual revenue run rate for ads on its TikTok rival short-video making platform Reels, and Reels now has a higher revenue run rate than Facebook/Instagram Stories at identical times post-launch. Meta had announced during its Q2 earnings call that Reels made up more than 30 per cent of the time on its platform.