Instagram returns shopping ambitions

The Future. Despite years of making shopping a priority across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, Meta released an internal memo that announced it is scaling back features that don’t boost its ad revenue. Specifically, the changes are coming for Instagram, which may be an admission that helping prop up influencer-driven companies is great for creators, but not very financially meaningful for the platforms themselves.

Drop the shop
The Information has the scoop that Meta is rethinking its push into e-commerce.

• The company plans on getting rid of Instagram’s dedicated “Shopping” page by next March and instead replacing it with a “simpler and less personalized version” internally dubbed “Tab Lite.”
• The company started testing Tab Lite with a select public group yesterday.

Those moves are on the heels of Meta internally sharing that shopping features such as creator commerce investment, Family & Friends Shopping, and visual search would be given a lower priority.

Face value
After reporting its first user and ad-revenue downturn (and dealing with a battered stock), the shopping retreat is just part and parcel of Meta’s plan to cut back on anything that isn’t “directly tied to advertising revenue for Meta,” per the memo.

• It nixed funding for news.
• It’s turning off its gaming app.
• It’s curtailing its ambitions in AR.

The features that are getting priority? Short-form video in the short term and the metaverse in the long term.