Instagram is shutting down its live shopping experience in March: How it will affect you

Meta has announced that it is shutting down the live shopping experience on Instagram. The company in a support page on it photo and video sharing platform said that live shopping on Instagram will go away on March 16, 2023.

“Beginning on March 16, 2023, you will no longer be able to tag products in live broadcasts on Instagram,” Instagram wrote in a support page adding, “You will still be able to set up and run your shop on Instagram as we continue to invest in shopping experiences for people and businesses across feed, stories, Reels, ads and more.”

Furthermore, the company said that other live broadcasting features remain unaffected, ‘including the ability to schedule a live broadcast, to invite guests to join your live broadcast, and to hold a live Q&A.’

What is changing?

This means that Meta come March 16, Instagram users will no longer be able to shop as a company or a business hosts a live broadcast on the platform. But that doesn’t mean that users won’t be able to shop on Instagram. Instead, they will have to wait until the business shares links on its page to let users shop for the newly introduced items. Other shopping experiences including the ones that involve businesses sharing shoppable links will remain the same.

Why is this happening?

Meta hasn’t detailed the reason why it is shutting down this experience. In its support page, the company said that it is making this change in order to “focus on products and features that provide the most value to our users.” This indicates that the move could be a part of the company’s cost-cutting measures wherein it is removing its resources from working on functionalities that haven’t taken off or are no longer being used in a way they once were, especially in the post-pandemic era.

This isn’t the only change.

It is worth noting that this is not the only change that Meta has made to the shopping experience on Instagram in the recent time. Earlier this year, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said that Instagram was removing the dedicated shopping tab from the home screen.

Also, last year Meta shut down live shopping experience on Facebook. Instead, it asked merchants to showcase products via Reels, Reels ads and product tagging on Instagram Reels.