What shopping will look like in the metaverse remains an open question, though plenty of efforts are already underway to define it. Some of them come from Meta, which just introduced new features for its primary Facebook app that may shed light on the company’s pursuit of real commerce in the virtual world.
On Friday, Meta introduced new community-oriented e-commerce features that are, in the near term, designed to use people’s personal connections, hobbies and causes to sell product. But the moves may also be foundational to a future Meta metaverse, already in progress, which appears to depend on a heightened sense of community.
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The primary update offers the ability for anyone to create a Facebook Shop within groups they belong to on the platform.
Dubbed Shops in Groups, the move ties shopping to personal connections, hobbies and causes, effectively turning a spigot on a new pipeline that, according to the company, more than 1.8 billion people use per month.
“I’m excited because this is a way for us to take Shops and bring it to additional types of organizations,” Yulie Kwon Kim, Meta’s vice president of product management, explained to WWD. “There are a lot of organizations that are built specifically around different communities that people care about.”
Superficially, the benefits are obvious. OctoNation, an octopus fan group that has been testing the feature, has been selling stickers, cups and apparel that feature its fandom of the water-loving arthropod. Schools, clubs and other organizations can follow suit and raise funds or generate revenue among group members who are inclined to support them.
Other changes follow the same theme: product recommendations in Groups conjures shopping links and imagery whenever someone recommends products to other members, and top product mentions in the news feed highlights the most recommended items inside a given user’s groups. These join other initiatives, like live shopping for creators, which the company is testing.
“The top theme is really community overall, where within our apps, people discover, they discuss, they trust recommendations because of the communities they have and a lot of these are within groups. But there is community, even more broadly around this,” said Kim. She pointed to live shopping as an example. Creators, by highlighting a live shopping stream from their personal pages, can draw their fan communities and brands around a cause they care about.