The Facebook brand has had a huge week of news! Instagram, a member of the Facebook family, unveiled many new shopping updates and capabilities for business accounts on the platform. Facebook, too, is seeing updates itself. Ready to learn about all this and more?
Let’s jump in ⬇️.
Instagram Extends Shopping Tools to More Businesses
This week, Instagram announced their commerce eligibility requirements to the public. These requirements, which can be found on their website, mean that shopping capabilities are beyond the testing stage and can be applied for by any qualifying business.
While many of the eligibility standards are quite vague, one spelled-out requirement is that a business primarily sells physical products. For sellers of digital products and services, qualifying for the whole host of shopping capabilities is not yet possible. Qualifying businesses must also designate their Instagram account as a business, meaning personal or influencer accounts cannot qualify, and must be established within their industry.
Instagram’s announcement of these new requirements comes after Facebook, their parent company, recently announced that they’d be taking steps to help small businesses gain exposure online amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Instagram Testing Caption Tags
With a small number of accounts in the United States, Instagram has begun experimenting with hyperlinks in photo captions. Similar to a shopping tag in a photo, caption tags allow users to click on a hyperlinked word or phrase that redirects them to a page where they can purchase the item.
The app has previously refrained from any sort of hyperlinking and only allowed users to link off the platform in their bio. However, with the expansion of linking through stories and shopping tags on posts, this new test could be indicative of Instagram extending linking privileges to more users.
Instagram allows ads without link to a FB page or ads account
Also this week, Instagram has started allowing business accounts to advertise without a corresponding Facebook page or Facebook ads account. This function is only open to a handful of new users in some regions – and it’s important to note that if a business account has already been linked to a Facebook page or ads account, this option is not available.
This new function is a step away from Facebook’s emphasis on interoperability and linkage within their family of apps. Especially with such emphasis on the connection between Facebook shops and Instagram shops in recent months, this new Instagram-only update shows a shift.
Facebook Live Sees Updates; Facebook Gaming Gains Mixer’s Audience
Facebook has just rolled out a host of new tools available to live streamers on the platform. Users can now upload graphic packages suitable for onscreen display during a live. The new host of capabilities will allow streamers to pull comments up on-screen, display links, and more.
These updates come in the wake of Microsoft shutting down Mixer, their own streaming service, and announcing that gamers and streamers currently partnered with them will be moving over to Facebook Gaming. These new capabilities mimic some of the tools available to streamers on other platforms, such as Mixer or Twitch, and may help this new group of users engage with their audience in familiar ways.
All these new tools can be found within the live video producer section of Facebook. The capabilities also eliminate the need for running third party services during a stream, as these new capabilities cover most of what third parties have to offer.
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