Facebook announces Shops in Groups, Live Shopping for Creators

San Francisco: Meta, formerly Facebook, is rolling out new shopping features — Shops in Groups, product recommendations and a test of Live Shopping — for Creators.

Shops in Groups enables admins of Facebook groups to set up an online store on their associated Facebook Page.

According to TechCrunch, it is up to the admins where this money goes — in the case of OctoNation, a page that tested the feature, the profits went to OctoNation’s nonprofit that educates people about octopuses.

This could get hairy in groups that do not have a clear philanthropic aim, but it is not as though Facebook groups have never been sites for drama before, the report said.

Still, Yulie Kwon Kim, Meta’s vice president of Product Management, pointed out that many group admins are volunteers and these shops could offer them a revenue stream for their work.

“The money goes to the group admin, and they can decide how they want to use it,” Kim told the website.

“This is a great way for people to sustain and keep the group going,” she added.

Facebook had previously announced its plans for group monetisation features, including shops, fundraisers and subscriptions, at its Facebook Communities Summit hosted earlier this month.

Facebook also said that users often ask for product recommendations in groups, think about a skincare or make-up group, so now, if a user mentions a product that is listed in a Facebook shop, they can tag it and embed it into their comment.

Top product recommendations from groups will appear within users’ news feeds.

Facebook has had Live Shopping for years, but as partnerships between brands and creators become more common, the app has begun testing a feature that would make these collaborations appear more seamless.

Now, instead of an influencer directing fans to another page to watch them sell a product or vice versa, creators and brands can cross-stream on both of their pages.