Facebook acquired a small video-shopping startup earlier this year to help build a live shopping feature inside the company’s marketplace product, according to a person familiar with the plans.
The social media company bought Packagd, a five-person company founded by Eric Feng, a former partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and most of the startup’s team joined Facebook in September. Packagd was building a shopping product for YouTube videos. “Think of it as a re-imagination of QVC or a home shopping network,” Feng said in 2017 interview with Bloomberg.
The acquisition by Facebook was not announced, but the small team is now working on a project for Marketplace, which would let users make purchases while watching live video broadcasts. Facebook tested a similar product a year ago in Thailand, though that effort did not include a way to buy merchandise directly from the video and has been shut down, a person familiar with the matter said.
A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed the efforts. “As we have shared in the past, we’re exploring ways to let buyers easily ask questions and place orders within a live video broadcast,“ she said in a statement.
Live shopping is growing in popularity, especially in China. Alibaba Group made it an important element of its Single’s Day this year, a massively popular one-day event that generated $38 billion in sales. Kim Kardashian announced a new fragrance via livestream to help hype the event, for example. Amazon.com Inc. is also dabbling in live video shopping.
Facebook has tried to take advantage of e-commerce for years without much success, though its Marketplace product -- a Craigslist-like feature for buying and selling used goods -- has nearly 1 billion monthly users and launched just three years ago. Facebook-owned Instagram has also said that shopping will be a key focus in 2020, and recently added the ability for users to buy directly from brands inside the app.
Packagd had raised $7.5 million from Kleiner Perkins, Forerunner Ventures and Alphabet Inc.’s GV.
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.