TikTok could end up continuing to provide live shopping in the US. The Financial Times said that the business is seeking a partnership with TalkShopLive to introduce live shopping options in North America.
According to the FT, corporations like Walmart and Microsoft’s MSN employ the Los Angeles-based live shopping platform TalkShopLive to host retail livestreams. According to reports, with the cooperation, TikTok may make use of TalkShopLive’s technology to provide advertisers the opportunity to concurrently broadcast the stream to their own websites and enable creators to hold live shopping sessions on TikTok.
After observing underwhelming results from its experiment in the UK, TikTok reportedly scaled back live shopping in the US and Europe back in July, according to a story from the Financial Times. Even while the company’s agreement with TalkShopLive isn’t said to be finalized, this might indicate that TikTok isn’t yet shutting down its live shopping aspirations, at least not in North America.
If TikTok does proceed with the deal, live shopping may launch “over the next month with significant companies,” just in time for the holiday season, according to the Financial Times. Since last year, TikTok has been looking at ways to incorporate commerce capabilities. Most recently, an Indonesian-specific Shop option has been added to the app.
Outside of Asia, where Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese sibling app, has found success with livestreams a la QVC, live shopping has failed to gain traction. However, this hasn’t stopped businesses like Amazon, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, and Pinterest from testing the functionality outside of the area. Even Facebook has experimented with live shopping, but the company declared in August that it will stop offering the service in order to concentrate on Reels.
The social media platform TikTok said in a statement to the Financial Times that it is “constantly exploring new and different options for how we can best serve our community, creators, and merchants in markets around the world,” some of which could include “partnerships which further support a seamless ecommerce experience for merchants.” In response to The Verge’s request for comment, TikTok delayed their response.
