Instagram wants you to shop in its app
Instagram has always been good for window shopping.
Now, the photo-centric app wants to turn that into actual shopping.
Instagram on Tuesday announced new features that will try to entice people to buy the goods that advertisers and brands are featuring within the app.
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The new effort is less about trying to take on Amazon and more about trying to replicate the real-life experience of heading to the mall and finding something you want.
Among the features will be a new discovery tool that will let users tap on an icon to see what products are featured, which then leads to more information about whatever it is you're looking at.
No spending actually happens inside Instagram. Instead, users that want to buy what they're looking at are then taken to a website or company app.
The new features already have more than 20 partners lined up, including Macy's, Kate Spade and Abercrombie.
The new feature isn't rolling out to everyone just yet. A select number of iOS users in the U.S. will see the new features.
Instagram is reportedly not taking a cut of the proceeds from any sales just yet, but would seem inevitable given Instagram's role in the transaction.
If Instagram can start to bring in money through shopping, it will be a boon for Facebook, which owns Instagram. Analysts already peg Instagram's revenue for 2016 to be around $3.2 billion — a pretty healthy number considering Facebook bought the app for $1 billion in 2012.
It would also give Facebook a foothold in the world of e-commerce, which is a market the company has had a tough time with. The company has tried a variety of different formats within its social network, most recently turning to chat bots and a Craigslist-like classifieds section.
Instagram also released a video to explain the new features.
“Our community uses Instagram as an aspirational discovery platform and they’re looking to us for inspiration,” said Ryan McIntyre, CMO of JackThreads, in an Instagram blog post about the new features.
Jason Abbruzzese is a Business Reporter at Mashable. He covers the media and telecom industries with a particular focus on how the Internet is changing these markets and impacting consumers. Prior to working at Mashable, Jason served as Markets Reporter and Web Producer at the Financial Times. Jason holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an M.A. in International Affairs from Australian National University.
