Amazon is Inspire-d by TikTok | WARC | The Feed

Amazon is Inspire-d by TikTok

E-commerce giant Amazon is launching a feature called Inspire within its app that will allow customers to scroll through a continuous feed of photos and videos featuring products they can click on and purchase.

How it works

Customers access Inspire via a lightbulb-shaped icon at the bottom of Amazon’s app, the Wall Street Journal explains. On their first use they can select their interests and the portal will then curate content accordingly.

Why it matters

The set-up will be familiar to anyone who uses TikTok, whose algorithms deliver content to users’ feed based on what it understands they will like. This has also been a major factor in TikTok making significant advances in social shopping, or what it prefers to call “community commerce”.

Amazon’s move into this area follows a path already trodden by other US tech giants as they look for ways to replicate the innovations around short-form video coming out of China – and from TikTok in particular – and to combine social media features with online shopping. 

What next? 

• Inspire is currently shopping-focused but it could expand into options to share content and trending content. 
• Amazon believes Inspire can attract influencers and help them grow their business, earning money when followers make purchases through customized links.

Key quote

“Video-based content really helps [customers] to understand the product more” – Oliver Messenger, Amazon’s director of shopping.

Sourced from Wall Street Journal

[Image: Wall Street Journal]