The transition of Meta to short-form video appears to have also affected Facebook Live Shopping events.

The company’s website has announced that live shopping events on Facebook would be discontinued as of October 1. It functioned almost like a personal Home Shopping Network, allowing Facebook Business owners to show off their goods in live videos to their followers. Businesses might use Messenger to accept payments and tell Page followers of upcoming live shopping events.

Instead of these sessions, Meta is advising businesses to consider using Reels, Reels advertisements, and product tagging on Instagram Reels to highlight their goods. They are focusing more on Reels on Facebook and Instagram, Meta’s short-form video offering, as customer viewing habits change, according to a post by Meta.

Given that the latter surpassed a $1 billion annual revenue run rate in the second quarter of this year, it’s not surprising that Meta is encouraging more retailers to use Reels and Reels advertisements. Instagram and Facebook have continued to prioritize in-feed adverts and suggested posts on user feeds, much to the dismay of consumers who miss seeing their friends. However, in response to a recent user-led criticism, Instagram has agreed to temporarily halt testing of its recommendation and video-focused features.

Due to TikTok’s dominance among Gen Z over the past two years, other social media sites have made certain strategic adjustments to appeal to a younger audience. Reels on Facebook and Instagram were mentioned by CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a key component of the company’s recovery strategy in light of Meta’s first quarterly revenue loss since going public.

Although it’s likely that a large portion of this time was spent watching TikToks that were shared, Instagram users now spend roughly 20% of their time on the app viewing Reels, which prompted the site to make some algorithmic changes to downrank videos from its rival.

In the meantime, Meta keeps encouraging users to upload more unique content to Reels. Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri recently made a statement in a video, amid criticism from users who miss Instagram’s former emphasis on images, that the platform would “over time” embrace video more.

Instagram added a variety of templates and tools to make it simpler to build Reels last month, and it started testing the idea of turning videos published on public Instagram accounts into Reels automatically.

Facebook originally introduced live shopping in 2018 and has been experimenting with methods to make it more user-friendly and well-liked over the last few years. The firm started testing “Live Shopping for Creators” in November of last year, allowing brands and creators to cross-stream on both of their pages rather than restricting viewers to a single one. In order to encourage bigger firms to experiment with live shopping as a platform and spread awareness about live shopping on Facebook, the company also introduced “Live Shopping Fridays” last summer.