Beware: An Avalanche of FB/IG Shop Features
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🗣 Social
About Product Suggestions for Your Shop | Facebook Business Help Center
Product Suggestions is a new feature that lets people discover, engage with, and purchase products from your Facebook Shop that are similar to the products featured in your Page’s posts.
When creating a post with an image on your Page and clicking Post, you will see a Product suggestions are turned on feature. This means we will suggest similar products from your catalog and add them to your post.
These products will show up in your post as “Similar Products” with up to 10 product suggestions, based on your inventory. This lets people discover new products from your shop and purchase them there.
TikTok granted 15 more days to close deal for US business - CNN
Thursday was supposed to be the drop-dead date for TikTok's Chinese parent, ByteDance, to divest the social media company, under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump this summer.
But as the deadline came and went, confusion reigned over what consequences might be in store for TikTok. Trump's executive order did not say that TikTok would be banned if it missed the deadline; in fact, it outlines no consequences at all. The order's ambiguity highlights the extremely unusual approach the Trump administration has taken with one of the world's fastest-growing social media platforms, which has 100 million users in the United States alone.
Social media’s biggest non-event continues.
Instagram redesigns its home screen for the first time in years, adding Reels and Shop tabs - The Verge
Instagram’s making major design changes to its home screen for the first time in years. Today, the company announced that it’s adding Reels and Shop tabs to its home screen, a communication of the company’s priorities. The Reels tab will, of course, lead users to Reels, shortform videos similar to TikTok. The Shop tab will surface personalized recommendations, editors’ picks curated by the @shop channel, shoppable videos, and new product collections. Both tabs make it easier for people to find what they want on the platform and go there immediately.
The Likes tab as well as the Create tab where people upload photos are moving to the top right-hand corner next to the direct messages inbox.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. And they are not stopping there:
Some Brands Are Testing Shopping Push Notifications on Instagram
Before judging my screenshot too hard, note that I don’t follow those brands’ accounts—suggesting retailers can nudge followers they want but don’t have.
Ugh.
Twitter Launches New 'Carousels' Ad Format Option | Social Media Today
Yesterday, Twitter announced a new addition to its ad format options: Carousels. With the launch of Twitter's new Carousels format, marketers can now add up to six images or videos in an ad.
🛍 Marketplace
Why resale ecommerce is growing in the face of wider retail challenges – Econsultancy
There are two overarching factors as to why consumers tend to shop second-hand – ethical and financial. With many people tightening their belts due to the impact of Covid, it’s likely that the latter has contributed to the growth in resale this year, as consumers embrace more affordable clothing instead of buying brand new. As well as reducing spend for consumers, online resale apps like Depop also enable users to make money or earn an additional income.
🏬 Brick & Mortar
Venmo is trying to dominate retail contactless payments | Modern Retail
PayPal has been slowly trying to gain a bigger retail foothold with the app, as evidenced by Venmo partnership with retailers like Foot Locker and delivery services like Grubhub and UberEats. Its plan is to continue adding partnerships — the latest being Lyft. Schulman also confirmed that the company is signing on ten major merchants — including Nike and Bed, Bath & Beyond — to process QR code payments. Venmo also plans to add 500,000 SMBs by the end of the year.
“The tailwinds are moving toward a mobile-oriented point of sale,” Schulman said, hinting at a five-to-seven-year plan to catch up with large players in this space, like Square. (Sqaure’s seller business alone brought in $965 million in quarterly revenue, according to its most recent earnings report.) To execute this, Venmo has “a number of plans underway,” he said, including consumer-facing QR codes and payment opportunities. The strategy is also in line with the U.S. market catching onto the use of digital payment apps. According to Statista, mobile POS sales are projected to hit nearly $2 billion in 2020. The category is set to grow by 19.2% by 2024, hitting $4.5 billion.
📦 Distribution
Amazon reportedly planning new service for its rural deliveries - The Verge
The e-commerce behemoth would rely on shipping hubs in rural areas under a plan called “wagon wheel,” a reference to Amazon’s hub-and-spoke supply chain. In Amazon’s terminology, a wagon wheel station provides support for smaller shipping facilities, according to The Information. Several since-deleted job postings The Information discovered described “a new delivery business ... that will support Amazon’s rural communities.”
When or where the program would be launched is not clear. But Amazon executives said on the company’s third quarter earnings call last week that it expects to continue putting money into its shipping and delivery infrastructure for years to come. Amazon’s fulfillment costs increased 57 percent year over year in the third quarter to $15 billion. And Amazon’s chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky said the company’s fulfillment and logistics square footage would increase 50 percent from last year, revealing that the company already spent around $30 billion on leases and other capital expenditures just this year alone.
🔒 Security
🤷🏻♂️ Just For Fun
Oreo lets fans customize cookies in personalization push | Marketing Dive
Customers can choose from eight colors of creme filling, or personalize the cookies even more by having them dipped in fudge and covering the edges with combinations of eight sprinkle colors. Oreo also offers optional features, such as adding images and personalized messages like "Happy Birthday!" in different fonts and colors.
You could call this a personalization push. But with marketers losing the privacy battle online, this feels much more like a push for personal data - to build a direct relationship with their brand loyalists.
👋 Holla!
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