Meta, the parent company of the social media platform Facebook will be closing its Live Shopping service to focus on Reels—Meta’s short video content product featured on Facebook and Instagram.
“From 1 October 2022, you will no longer be able to host any new or scheduled live shopping events on Facebook,” Facebook posted on its business help page.
“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,” it added.
The social media major said that the users will be able to use Facebook Live to broadcast live events after the October 1 deadline. However, a user won’t be able to create product playlists or tag products in the Facebook Live video.
Meta added that the users looking to engage their followers deeply with products can try tagging the same in Reels on Instagram. However, the social media conglomerate did not clarify whether Facebook Reels will have the same feature or not.
Facebook introduced Live Shopping back in 2018, to allow users to sell products via Facebook’s live streaming feature. The social media platform also charged a small selling fee at the time of checkout. Therefore, the idea was there to monetise the feature back then.
