Instagram’s livestream shopping feature is now over a year old, and beauty brand adoption has become widespread.  On September 19, Instagram concluded its “10+ Days of Live Shopping” campaign featuring a range of consumer brands, including many in the beauty and fashion categories. Beauty participants included one of the first Instagram livestream... See more

Facebook Shops and Instagram Shops represent a model of e-commerce that more closely aligns with consumers' natural shopping behavior, combining serendipitous discovery and social inspiration.

“Influencers are like the new catalogue,” adds Nguyen, who has a devoted Instagram following of 125,000 and counting. “When you have that database of inspiration [on someone’s Instagram or blog], it is so much easier than walking into a store with a whole bunch of stuff on the shelves, and you don’t know how to style it.”

Influencers are the future of discovery-driven, brand-centric commerce. This means that they’re juxtaposed to Amazon and search-driven, brand-agnostic commerce. Picks and shovels like Shopify and Stripe enable influencer commerce.