Shopping on Instagram feature launches in eight more countries

It's always about the money. No matter what some young kid who dropped out of college says when he launches his new app, the goal is monetization. After all, it is what makes the world go round. And when Facebook purchased Instagram for $1 billion back in 2012, the big question was how would Facebook turn a profit on the acquisition? Courting advertisers was one solution, and offering subscribers a way to purchase merchandise directly from the app was another revenue producing idea.

Instagram started testing this shopping feature back in 2016. Products are tagged in photos posted on the app, and interested subscribers who tap on the image of an item can purchase it right from the app without having to open the browser. Last year, shopping on Instagram became available to state-side subscribers, and today the program has been rolled out to eight more countries including the U.K., Canada, Brazil, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain.

Commerce platform Shopify, which provides its 500,000 merchants with access to Instagram users through a deal with the latter, is one of the companies that will benefit from the expansion of the program. Instagram has 800 million monthly users at last count.


source: Shopify